The problem is there are none.
Unsurprisingly, Keir Starmer is backing a European response to Trump’s talks with Russia to end the Ukraine war.
Our fearless leader quite likes the whiff of patriotism. He likes it even more when his personal ratings need boosting.
Some say Starmer is looking for a ‘Falklands moment’ to save his rudderless premiership. This is partly true.
However, the Russo-Ukraine war is hardly comparable to the weeklong war for the Falkland Islands.
But there is a similarity. Margaret Thatcher’s effort to reclaim the Malvinas from General Galtieri was waged to consolidate her agenda in the UK.
The Starmer government may hope to do the same, except it barely has an agenda to shore up.
The ideological stakes of Ukraine are quite different. It’s much worse.
Firstly, Vladimir Putin called NATO’s bluff when he launched the invasion of Ukraine, daring the US and Europe to respond with direct military force.
Instead, the alliance decided to avoid a direct confrontation and pump arms into Ukraine to help defend its territory.
In the meantime, NATO set out to expand further to Finland and Sweden.
Russia’s war quickly became a war of attrition, with the Ukrainians fighting back valiantly. But it soon became a matter of whose ammunition would run out first.
What’s changed is that the new American government has calculated that the war isn’t high priority. Donald Trump is far more concerned with how to contain China.
Now the European Union (EU) is expected to care for itself.
Maybe this moment was always coming. If so, Trump has just hastened it and now we’re all going to pay the price for decades of European complacency.
The New Normal
There is some truth to the president’s claim that European governments have been “freeloading” on the United States.
Since the Cold War, Western Europe moved away from guns-and-butter economics and relied on American leadership to guarantee its safety.
European leaders are now in the odd position of trying to build a new security policy within the US sphere of orbit.
The result is that Keir Starmer says one thing in Washington and another in London.
But the British premier can’t risk a full clash with Trump over Ukraine. Thus, the obsequious display of loyalty during his White House visit.
Somehow, a not insignificant number of Britons think Starmer is acting in defiance of the White House right now.
The truth is that Donald Trump has always demanded that NATO member states up their military spending and the UK and Europeans are doing just that.
This new normal may mean the Labour government will resort to austerity to pay for rearmament.
Starmer has gone from claiming there’s no money to subsidise winter fuel payments for the elderly to committing over £13 billion to defence.
The premier is now considering cutting welfare, particularly benefits to the sick and disabled. This is an easy sell in a Parliament of millionaires and landlords.
The Conservative Party, supposedly the official opposition, is standing shoulder to shoulder with Labour on Ukraine, fearing the consequences of appearing ‘soft’ on Putin.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch is struggling to make her voice heard. She is in the awkward position of sharing the government’s platform, leaving a space for another opposition to emerge.
Enter Reform UK.
Many Reform voters are more supportive of Trump, and even Putin, than the rest of the electorate, favouring ‘strong man’ solutions to the world’s problems.
At the same time, the Reform leadership has avoided taking too soft a line on Russia.
Nigel Farage is very aware that his mission to take over the Tory Party means winning over a much bigger slice of the national vote.
Many right-wing voters are still instinctively anti-Russian and support Ukraine to the hilt. But there’s an obvious limit to this. The popular view of the war is that the costs are hitting us in energy bills.
The most support for Putin in Britain is concentrated on the extreme right.
Neo-Nazi, nationalist groups such as Britain First and Patriotic Alternative view Putin as a white saviour defending his homeland from Western imperialism.
Farage is content to take many of the far right’s voters, but he wants to win over the vast majority of Tories. So, Reform is maintaining a balancing act on many issues, including Ukraine, to hold its coalition together and expand it further.
Meanwhile, the left is divided as always with barely a voice in Parliament.
Outside the House of Commons, it’s split between opposing Starmer’s march to rearmament and those who think arms are necessary to defend Ukraine.
Of course, the Stop the War Coalition has been more active in campaigning against British support for Israel for the last 18 months. However, the antiwar left’s line has been to oppose Russian aggression and critique NATO expansion.
This is often caricatured as a pro-Russian position. But the early protests in London often had leftists waving Ukraine flags along with Stop the War placards.
Many of the same progressives marched with Stop the War and the Ukraine Solidarity Campaign.
There was also a brief period when the antiwar Russian left was mobilised. These protests matched the sentiment of the Stop the War demonstrations in London, but the Russian state cracked down fast and hard.
This moment is long gone now. Yet these parallel demonstrations had reached the same line: the main enemy is at home.
This is one of the great axioms of the left opposition to WWI. It’s as true today in Russia as it is in the United States.
Neither Washington Nor Moscow
Britain, France, and Germany are about to lead the rest of the European Union in a major arms build-up. Liberals see this as the only way forward.
The irony of Emmanuel Macron talking as if Europe must decide its own fate without Russia and the US is lost on these people.
It’s as if centrist dads have taken up the old Trotskyist slogan of the 1960s: “Neither Washington nor Moscow.”
The reality is quite different.
EU leaders are still acting within the limits of American power. This could change in time, but no member state will risk a break with Trump right now.
Should Britain and France send troops to Ukraine outside of US sanction, the American president may well choose to publicly humiliate them.
This could even be a farcical repeat of the Suez Crisis.
Another possibility is that Washington signs off on a peacekeeping force in Ukraine after the deal is signed.
This wouldn’t be a frontline force because that’s too provocative. France and Britain might go along with this and pretend they’re doing the right thing.
The real test will come if Trump agrees to oppose a peacekeeping force in negotiations. We’ll quickly find out just how brave Starmer and Macron really are.
Such a force would be a tough sell for Russia.
The most likely outcome is that EU member states will continue with the wartime status quo and put more military equipment in Ukraine’s hands once the deal is signed.
Bear in mind, NATO is far from united. Poland has said it will not send troops to Ukraine and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is not interested either.
Turkey is second only to the US in terms of the size of its army, while Poland is third. Ankara is far more concerned with its near abroad, particularly Syria, than Ukraine.
This is why the vision Starmer is conjuring up about a European course to saving Ukraine is just a fantasy. The biggest players are unavailable.
Either Britain will have to challenge the United States and risk the consequences, or it will fall in line with the coming annexation deal.
How the premier will sell this carve-up to the public is the next big question for Labour.
The voters most moved by the plight of Ukraine could soon join his most ardent critics. The anti-Labour coalition has been growing every day for months and this would be the perfect top-up.
Of course, Starmer sees Ukraine as his best hope of rebuilding Labour’s fortunes.
So far, it’s helped boost his personal ratings slightly, as the party is barely holding on to its lead position in the polls.
The problem is Trumpism represents the return of nationalist chauvinism on the world stage.
The US may be the receding global hegemon, but the old days of Great Power politics and naked imperialism are back.
Keir Starmer is a nobody in this game.
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Photograph courtesy of Number 10. Published under a Creative Commons license.
