Sir Keir Starmer has been tireless in his diplomatic efforts to construct a ‘coalition of the willing’ and send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine. At the weekend, he hosted a conference call with 29 other world leaders, and on Thursday the defence secretary, John Healey, will convene a meeting of military chiefs at the MoD’s Permanent Joint Headquarters at Northwood ‘to put strong and robust plans in place to swing in behind a peace deal and guarantee Ukraine’s future security’.
The Prime Minister’s commitment is firm and public. Along with likely partners France, Turkey, Canada and Australia, the United Kingdom is ready to contribute to a military force of up to 30,000 personnel to be deployed in Ukraine. The government has said that ‘it would be a long-term commitment, we are talking about years’. However clear and definitive these promises are, though, they are weirdly back-to-front and based on extremely dubious assumptions.
More broadly – and it is worrying that this needs to be said – there is currently no peace to be kept
Ever since President Donald Trump disclosed in February that he had unilaterally spoken to Vladimir Putin to explore how to end the war in Ukraine, Starmer has pivoted energetically to posing as the champion and architect of a peacekeeping force for the conflict.
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