Listening to Sir Keir Starmer explaining why standing up to Russian tyranny and bending over backward to get the United States to stay engaged in Europe is like reliving the early dramas of post-war Europe 1948-51, writes Denis MacShane.
Starmer’s flat, uninspiring style is almost a parody of Clement Attlee’s dull clipped upper-middle class tones as he brutally shattered the illusions of the Labour left and many British opinion formers that a post-war world based on an alliance with Moscow – the left talking with the left – could be built.
London, like Paris and other European countries has seared into institutional memory what happened when the United States went home after 1918 and Roosevelt won re-election in 1940 with this Trump like-pledge to the mothers of America: “I have said and will say again and again and again, your sons will not be sent into any foreign war.”
FDR’s pledge was welcomed in Berlin and caused despair in London. The endless babble from UK politicians about the “special relationship” a phrase coined by Winston Churchill in 1946 at the time Washington was helping dismantle the British empire based as it was on white supremacist rule but one that I never heard from American lips in years going to Washington as a British foreign minister under Tony Blair obscures the fact that US presidents are not notably pro-Brit.
President Eisenhower shouted at Harold Macmillan during the Suez crisis: “Are you mad, Harold?” and the US pointedly refused to back Britain as London tried to hang on to its colonies.
American presidents turned a blind eye to fund-raising and weapons shipments by Irish ultra-nationalists who thought their campaign of killing children and women would prevail and did nothing to help Mrs Thatcher win the Falklands conflict. Trump is far from being the first president who sees the world through his own eyes not those of superior Brits.
Starmer like Attlee after 1945 is very gently playing the US president as he ignores the moralistic denunciation of British bien pensants who think the UK should break relations with Washington as they watched Trump follow Vice President JD Vance into a stupid shouting match of insults with President Zelenksy who forgiveably lost his cool and tried to talk over the arrogant, cock-sure Vice President.
Zelensky quickly recovered and sent out tweets and later a speech expressing his gratitude to the United States for military, diplomatic and financial support to Ukraine since 2022.
In the same period Britain was running down its armed forces to little over 70,000 soldiers – the lowest level in nearly 300 years. Boris Johnson studied classics at Oxford but forgot the Roman adage, “If you want peace prepare for war.” Britain along with France and Germany sent some military support to Ukaine but not anything like the amount of modern weapons and ammunition Ukraine needs where the US has been the main supplier.
Britain put caveats on the use of its intermediate range Storm Shadow missile as Tory ministers prevented Ukraine using them to attack Putin’s bases and weapons depots just across the border in Russia.
A year ago the Conservative government scorned President Macron when he suggested that European troops could be deployed into Ukraine but not in front-line or combat roles. Starmer is using much more forthright language than any of the Brexit era Tory prime ministers. In this he resembles Attlee when he committed the RAF to support the Berlin Airlift in 1948-49 to face down Moscow.
But the prime minister needs to pay attention to history. When Attlee also backed Washington with troops in the Korean war, he was forced to pay for it with a reduction in health care spending much as Starmer is now raiding the aid budget.
Labour is losing council by-elections of seats it holds and the main anti-Labour anger mentioned on voters’ doorsteps is taking away the Winter Fuel Allowance on the eve of one of the coldest winters in recent memory. The Treasury saves £1.4 bn with this cut. Now the Government has announced it will give the French firm Thales £1.6 bn to build new air defence missiles for the UK and for Ukraine.
75 years ago the British people failed to understand why the Treasury could not raise money to ensure British health care as well as take on Russian support for North Korea. Attlee lost the subsequent election in 1951. Cutting aid whether to pensioners in the UK or the poor in the global south may feel macho and Trump-like but all it means in the poorest regions of the world is another wave of migrants heading for Britain and other rich countries as their lives become unbearable at home.
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The Author, Denis MacShane, is a former UK Minister for Europe under the Blair Government.
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