Why didn’t Starmer go to Munich?

The Munich Security Conference, which this week gathers in the Bavarian capital for its 61st edition, is a big deal in defence and foreign policy circles. When it first convened in 1963, there were just 60 delegates, but that has now grown to more than 350 heads of state, government and international organisations, ministers, senior military leaders, parliamentarians, business leaders and others. The incoming chairman of the conference is former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg.

Sir Keir Starmer is not among the attendees. While Boris Johnson gave speeches in 2021 and 2022, and Rishi Sunak addressed the meeting in 2023, the current prime minister will be represented by David Lammy, John Healey, Peter Kyle and Anneliese Dodds. No doubt they will all be frantically busy engaging with international counterparts, especially in light of the announcement by United States Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth earlier in the week that President Trump had spoken to Vladimir Putin to begin negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine.