Politics: fever dream
By Richard North - February 27, 2025
It is interesting to note how Starmer used PMQs yesterday to further highlight his unqualified support for Ukraine, as he told the House that this week marked three years since Putin’s “barbaric invasion”.
“The courage of the Ukrainians is inspiring”, he added, declaring that: “across this House we stand with them for as long as it takes”. And that was why, he said, “we are increasing defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP by April 2027, with an ambition to reach 3 percent in the next Parliament, as economic and fiscal conditions allow”.
He then reminded the House that, in the afternoon, he was to travel to the US to have discussions with President Trump “about the enduring security partnership between our two countries”.
Before turning to little Olukemi’s contribution at the despatch box, it is worth recording a critique in Conservative Home made of her recent speech on foreign policy, under the title “Badenoch is not a realist. She is living in a fantasy land”.
Writer William Atkinson went on to describe this speech as “so bland, formulaic, and unsurprising that it would have made Chat-GPT blush”. Her commitment to never saying anything original, interesting, or newsworthy, he wrote, remains admirable, as disastrous as it is for the party that she has already taken to third place.
Much in the same vein, Atkinson concluded his short piece telling us that “It was a classic Badenoch speech. Nothing new was said. The same undisputed banalities were trotted out. A few notables were name-checked; no new policies were announced”.
“She is”, he said, “an irrelevance. She might still be able to summon a few hacks to listen to her for half an hour. But everything important is happening elsewhere: Washington, Number 10, or the ever-growing number of packed-out Reform rallies across the country”.
It was this “irrelevance” who stood opposite Starmer yesterday, and so precise and appropriate is the description that it would be tedious in the extreme to offer a detailed analysis of her contribution.
Suffice to say that, in her opening remarks, she wished the prime minister “every success on his trip to Washington”, telling us that “the prime minister and I are completely united in our support for Ukraine as a proud and sovereign nation”.
This, supposedly, is from the leader of the opposition, although there was not much opposition evident yesterday in the Commons, nor even the day before when Starmer made his statement on “defence and security”. It was then that Badenough welcomed Starmer’s “fulsome support for Ukraine”.
It might have helped to have seen some clinical analysis, but that is not what the leader of the opposition does these days – not with any success. But nor does this seem to be a function of the Commons, where the emphasis seemed to be on “unity”, with MPs of most parties falling over themselves to support the government’s position.
One has here to exclude MPs representing Farage’s business venture, Reform UK. As Conservative Simon Hoare noted, “what an abdication of responsibility and duty it is that not a single member of the Reform party is able to ask a question of the Prime Minister this afternoon on these precious issues of defence and security”.
Although one can argue that the time Reform MPs can spend in the House is limited – not least by their low numbers and the corresponding increased demands on their time, it is possible to concede that Hoare does have a point. The prime minister’s statement – whatever one thought of the content – was an important one. The following debate afforded an important opportunity for the party to state its position.
Perhaps, therefore, it is not only Badenough who is the “irrelevance”, as input from the Golden Boy on defence issues is hard to find and he has only been engaged on Ukraine on peripheral matters, while “important things” happen elsewhere.
That puts Starmer in the place he wants to be – centre stage – as he flies off to Washington, grabbing the front-page headlines in most of today’s national newspapers.
What is particularly significant – which is brought out in the lead story in The Times – is the way Starmer is building Putin into a hate figure, personalising the drama, with him the “shining knight” ready to do battle with the forces of evil.
Thus, under the headline, “We need US security to hold back Putin, Starmer tells Trump”, we see him having “warned” Trump that Russia will “come again” unless the US provides security guarantees to European soldiers stationed in Ukraine after a potential ceasefire.
Starmer, capitalising on his recent announcements, says he has made the “considered decision” to deploy troops to Ukraine alongside soldiers from France and other European nations, but only if there is a “backstop” from the US. It is his view that “lasting peace” would not happen without the support of the US and that an effective deterrent to Putin was needed.
It seems to be the case that Starmer is intent on making this a touchstone issue, glossing over Tump’s clear rejection of US “boots on the ground” in Ukraine, while doing the “bridge thing” with the Europeans, persisting in calling for US support, including air cover.
I don’t know how far Starmer is going to get with this line as Trump seems to be hardening his “anti-European” rhetoric, not only asserting that it was up to European nations to take responsibility but now telling his cabinet that the EU had been “formed in order to screw the United States”, stating that 25 percent tariffs on European goods, including cars, would be introduced soon.
As co-author of The Great Deception with Christopher Booker, which describes in detail the early years of le projet, we observed that a strong feature of the history of the EEC and then the EU was how keen US politicians and diplomats were to see the European venture established and succeed.
This certainly extended to the foreign policy field with secretary of state Henry Kissinger famously complaining that there was no single telephone number for Europe. It would seem that, as with so much else, Trump’s grasp of the realities of European history is somewhat fragile.
Starmer, therefore, is probably going to struggle with his self-appointed “bridge” role between European and the United States but, despite this, the Telegraph is telling us that the prime minister is preparing to demand that the US supplies the resources to “protect Ukraine’s peacekeepers”.
Much will depend, no doubt, on Starmer’s ability to convince Trump that the UK government’s uptick in defence spending is real and will make a measurable different to the defence posture of European forces.
However, in this he may come a serious cropper, depending on how well Trump is briefed. In the Mail is the lead story that he is “’set to blow defence billions on Chagos Islands surrender’ as Labour repeatedly fails to deny that a significant chunk of its increase in military spending will fund airbase sell-out”.
If this stands up, it will turn out that Starmer’s case for increased spending on defence is so thin that Trump will hardly want to deal with him, so watching the mood music – and the body language – today will be more than interesting.
Starmer, though, might think he has his own Trump card – to coin a phrase – in that we are told that he is ready to offer the Anglophile president the reward of an official state visit to meet the king, if he rolls over and backs European peacekeeping forces.
Lost in all this, though, is the dire military situation in Ukraine, where any prolonged delay in concluding peace talks may mean that there is very little left of Ukraine to negotiate about.
In their rush to applaud Ukraine’s “brave resistance”, therefore, the country’s supporters seem befuddled by a fever dream in which Zelensky can emerge triumphant with their backing, to emerge victorious at the negotiating table.
It remains to be seen what the world looks like to them when the fever breaks, but there is a chance that Trump, today, will be dolling out the political equivalent of antibiotics, to hasten the process. In the meantime, reality has gone into hiding.