The Labour prime minister arrived in Kyiv this morning, offering a “landmark 100 Year Partnership” which will purportedly see the UK assist Ukraine’s military for “as long as it takes.”
Setting aside the fact Keir Starmer’s grandstanding comes less than a week before the inauguration of Donald Trump, after which time the incoming president intends to end the war in Ukraine—possibly within months—this century-long commitment ignores Britain’s own weaknesses.
How can the government keep a straight face while pledging to support Ukraine’s “economic resilience” when Britain’s own economy is collapsing? Just months ago, ministers said the state could not afford winter fuel payments for pensioners, despite Labour itself warning this could lead to thousands of deaths. News today of underwhelming (yet unsurprising) 0.1% economic growth was supposed to “ease” pressure on the enfeebled chancellor but actually shows the situation has not got any better.
To say there’s no money for pensioners while shoveling piles of cash into Ukraine’s economy—including indefinite payments of £3 billion (€3.56bn) a year in military aid—is “an insult to people back home,” according to commentator Neil Clark.
As for the specifics of how London will “bolster military collaboration” with Kyiv, it is difficult to imagine what can be offered given Britain’s armed forces appear effectively out of order themselves. The Navy is “pathetically weak,” according to a former First Sea Lord, and air defences are “insufficient,” while simulations show that the Army as a whole would run out of ammunition in just eight days if it were to actually go into combat.
Perhaps most laughable is Britain’s pledge to provide a “new UK-built Grain Verification Scheme [which] will also be launched to track stolen grain from occupied Ukrainian territories.” The state can’t even keep track of most of the illegal migrants it tags with electronic trackers. How could anyone seriously believe that this scheme will be any less of a failure?
The whole deal fits in, said Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens, with “the great delusion of grandeur which grips this country, its people and its government,
that we’re still a politically, diplomatically and militarily important country, and a rich one, which we’re not.
The ‘100 Year Partnership’ has not been debated in the UK Parliament, though most representatives of the establishment parties would heap praise upon it if it was.
Today’s visit has followed reported concerns of the UK’s more “muted” support for Ukraine under Starmer, who has taken longer getting to Kyiv as prime minster than Rishi Sunak and Boris Johnson did before him, albeit at very different stages of the war.
