ON THE one hand, Keir Starmer hosts European and Canadian leaders for a summit on militarisation in response to the abrupt US policy shift on Ukraine.

On the other Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu blocks all humanitarian aid to Gaza, threatening to derail the second phase of the fragile ceasefire.

Donald Trump’s position on Gaza, calling for the ethnic cleansing of its whole population, has not been endorsed in European capitals. But nor has it bothered them enough for heads of government to race to Washington to beg him to change his mind. 

Peace in Ukraine is, apparently, a far greater threat than war in the Middle East.

Starmer and Macron’s Washington visits failed. The British PM was an embarrassment in Washington, told “that’s enough” by the US president even as he fawned on him by weaselling out of a question on Trump’s threats to Canada. 

But the sycophancy secured nothing, as Trump and Vice-President JD Vance’s public humiliation of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday showed. Even now, Starmer, like Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, calls on Zelensky to “patch things up” with Trump. 

They delude themselves: the shift in US policy is not down to some personal falling out. 

Washington wants an off-ramp from confrontation with Russia to concentrate on its global “peer competitor,” China; it recognises that the Pacific, not the Atlantic, is now the global centre of gravity economically, and has demoted Europe in its hierarchy of geopolitical interests accordingly; and it appreciates, apparently rather better than EU or British leaders, that the war is being lost. 

Vance was not the first to point out that Ukraine faces severe manpower problems and endemic draft-dodging, leading it to deploy press gangs to seize men for the front line on the streets. The less propagandistic parts of the British media, such as the Financial Times, have reported on this for months. Starmer’s inane pledges to supply Ukraine for “as long as it takes” ignore the fact that the longer the fighting goes on, the worse for Ukraine: one reason Ukrainians show majority support for talks in polls.

Having howled down all talk of negotiations for three years, a White House U-turn means Starmer is now in favour of talks too. 

But he deludes himself again believing that Europe, if it ramps up military spending (and Nato countries already account for 75 per cent of world military spending), will convince Trump to offer the very “security guarantees” he has repeatedly ruled out to a hazardous Franco-British deployment in Ukraine.

That this is about appeasing, not defying, Trump is clear since Starmer offers no quid pro quo for a US retreat from Europe. He does not suggest pulling back British warships helping US counterparts goad China in its coastal seas, or withdrawal from provocative Pacific commitments like the Aukus submarine pact. 

If Britain “steps up” in Europe, it will be at the cost not only of our foreign aid budget but of social security and public services too.

But it is more serious still to oppose British militarism because of its essential character. Britain is an imperialist country, involved in multiple acts of aggression against other countries from 1999 on, and has recently played a direct role in Israel’s war on Gaza.

At the 2022 Trades Union Congress, an NEU delegate opposing increased arms spending pointed out that for all the lofty talk of defending Ukraine, British bombs would actually be used “to kill kids in Yemen.”

The British state does not have a benevolent side determined to uphold national independence in Ukraine, and a malevolent one helping crush any prospect of that in Palestine.

It is part of a belligerent US-led alliance whose wars have cost millions of lives. If Trump is now disrupting that alliance, we should take the opportunity to seek real independence and pursue a peaceful foreign policy.