The media swooning over Starmer and Ukraine is vibes, not substance

This saga reflects how mainstream political commentary in Britain is superficial and seduced by power

All of a sudden, the commentariat are swooning over Keir Starmer. He was leading the most unpopular government in recorded history, lacking any coherent vision and best known for trying to freeze grannies and being showered with freebies. Then, the Ukraine crisis came along and suddenly he’s apparently Winston Churchill.

Labour figures have been briefing journalists that this is Starmer’s Falklands moment, when Margaret Thatcher’s despised government was rescued by a tide of jingoism. Leaving aside there is no actual comparison here - the Falkland Islands were British territories which were invaded - this is grubby stuff. Labour figures clearly see the “meat grinder” - as it is grimly called - of Ukraine as a great political opportunity to turn the fortunes of a disastrous government around.

The response of the British press pack to last week’s love-in with Donald Trump was instructive, illustrating how for most political reporters, what matters is “vibes” rather than substance.

Now look, I am not here to kink shame. If Keir Starmer sticking his tongue up Donald Trump’s backside is your thing, if that’s what gets you, well, excited, then no judgement from me. I guess if I was going to be, perhaps, a little pernickety, then I might gently suggest that there should be a very clear demarcation between this extremely niche fetish and political journalism.

Unfortunately, however, Starmer’s truly grotesque performance with Donald Trump, a man he aggressively denounced when he was pretending to be left-wing so he could get elected Labour leader, received some rather unfortunate coverage from the British media.

The Daily Mirror, whose front page once plastered a picture of Donald Trump alongside ‘A liar and a chat until the bitter end’, this time splashes: ‘A very special relationship: Keir’s Trump card’.

The Daily Mail went for ‘WHAT AN UNLIKELY BROMANCE!’, while the Daily Express, which is somewhat more right-wing than Genghis Khan - gets really rather hot and bothered with "TRUMP BACKS 'GREAT TRADE DEAL' FOR BREXIT BRITAIN".

The previous incarnation of Keir Starmer had some choice things to say about Trump. In February 2017, he denounced an article for being too sympathetic to Trump, saying:

The battle of Trump v rule of law & human rights is real. We need to be clear. Don't accept his agenda.

In another tweet in June 2018, he shared what was called “harrowing audio” of sobbing children separated from their parents at US immigration centres, adding:

Humanity and dignity. Two words not understood by President Trump. A truly ‘great country’ treats all people with humanity and dignity.

In June 2019, he tweeted:

An endorsement from Donald Trump tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with Boris Johnson’s politics and why he isn’t fit to be Prime Minister.

On 31st October 2019, he tweeted:

Donald Trump endorses Boris Johnson. Another reason to #VoteLabour on 12 December.

Given Starmer is now going to negotiate a trade deal with the US, it is notable that in November 2019 he tweeted:

Boris Johnson is prepared to sell off the NHS to Donald Trump’s America.

At this election you can stop him by voting Labour.

In January 2020, when he was standing to be Labour leader, he tweeted:

‘The Government’s response to Donald Trump’s actions is not good enough.

The UK Government should hold him to account for his actions and stand up for international law, not tacitly condone the attack.” - in this case by the way he was talking about a US airstrike on an Iranian general in Iraq - can you even imagine him doing that now.

He also added that “the international community needs to re-engage, not isolate Iran.” Imagine him saying anything approximating that now.

Bearing in mind Trump is significantly more extreme than the first term Starmer was savaging.

In the White House, Starmer had a love in with Trump, who his advisors clearly told him to repeatedly physically touch, following French President Macron’s handsy performance. Starmer of course handed him an invitation letter from King Charles to Donald Trump, asking him for an “unprecedented” second state visit.

At the time, that was portrayed as a grand diplomatic triumph.

And then Starmer said the following:

On issues, like Ukraine, thank you for changing the conversation to bring about the possibility that we can have a peace deal.

You what? Starmer’s position was arm Ukraine to allow it to fight to the end. Trump’s position is Ukraine has to surrender significant swathes of its land, among other things, as well as calling Ukraine’s President Zelensky a ‘dictator’.

As Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani notes: “Any of Starmer’s own MPs pushing a peace deal several years was liable to be suspended!”

Now the obvious response is that Starmer may be lying through his teeth, but he has to play the game in order to deliver results from an unstable far-right demagogue. But he didn’t secure any results. The press pack were too beguiled by style - Trump responding well to being flattered - to bother taking note of the substance.

Before the British prime minister went to the US, he decided he needed to present the far-right US President a special gift. Trump has been demanding European nations hiking spending. So Starmer decided to give Trump a nicely wrapped gift: hiking British military spending. He claimed it would go up by £13.4 billion.

Now this is actually a deceit. Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the government is “playing silly games with numbers”: in real terms, it’s more like around £6 billion.

The Labour manifesto promised to restore development spending to 0.7% of GDP, that is the economy, as soon as possible. It’s now being slashed from the current 0.5% of income down to 0.3% in 2027. That’s a Labour government doing the biggest cut to overseas aid in history. Paul Johnson from the Institute of Fiscal Studies says the effective cut in aid is even bigger in practise.

The polling shows this is superficially very popular, but when you ask the public about specifics - such as humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians, which now faces being cuts - the answers are rather different.

Whatever you think about increasing military spending, Starmer’s crew have no interest in say asking the rich to pay more money. They’ll obliterate the aid budget, an idea which would once put you on the hard right of British politics.

It’s so extreme in fact it’s actually led to a rare sighting of that endangered species - a Labour politician with a spine. Anneliese Dodds, the international aid minister, has resigned from the government, stating that Starmer says he wants to continue support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine, for vaccination, for climate and for rules based systems. But she says it’ll be impossible to maintain these priorities, given the depth of the cuts, and adds “the effect will be far greater than presented”. She says the cuts will “remove food and healthcare from desperate people, harming the UK’s reputation”.

She also makes clear she thinks this is about Starmer being Trump’s puppet. She says Starmer maintains he’s not ideologically opposed to international development, but adds “The reality is already that this decision is already being portrayed as following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID”.

Indeed just to underline how comically devoid of beliefs these people are, at the beginning of the month, the foreign secretary, David Lammy, warned Trump’s foreign aid cuts were a “big strategic mistake” which would allow China to grow its power. Then when his boss told him - change of plan: he wrote a Guardian column saying “we have to make cuts”.

As for Ukraine: even before it all fell apart, it was clear that Starmer had secured nothing tangible.

Given the groupthink on display from political journalists who clearly enjoyed their ollie to the White House, it was welcome that Freddie Hayward at the New Statesman punctured this nonsense.

Park Ukraine for a moment. Freddie Hayward notes a big success was supposed to be Trump backing the Chagos deal - but that deal is Britain paying billions of pounds so the US Air Force can keep using Diego Garcia.

And as for a trade deal, as Hayward notes “If the UK does get a free-trade deal with the US, who do you think will get better terms: an economic behemoth or an isolated, stagnant economy?” adding:

If Washington extracts concessions on Big Tech, agricultural trade and service access in exchange for not imposing non-existent tariffs – is that a victory for the UK?

And that’s before we talk about Trump supporting the mass violent removal of Gaza’s surviving population. Starmer is not even pretending to care about that.

But then it all fell apart. The next day, Zelensky visited the White House and was humiliated. Trump is demanding that he sign a deal so US companies can exploit Ukraine’s minerals, and that Zelensky sign a ceasefire deal he’s implacably opposed to. As well as the US making clear there will be no “security backstop” - that is going to war if Russia resumes its invasion of Ukraine - Trump has now ceased all military spending to Ukraine. After it all fell apart, one commentator called the state visit - so lauded before - “a nightmare”.

Now in the midst of all of this, Starmer has received plaudits for embracing Zelensky and offering solidarity. But again, what should matter is actual substance. Is Starmer going to secure a “security backstop”? No. Has he convinced Trump to shift his position on Zelensky? No, that is only deteriorating. And Ukraine is set to end up with a ceasefire agreement which hands over large swathes of its territory to Russia.

For the political commentariat, though, what matters is vibes. Starmer is presentationally doing things they like. But then Peter Mandelson - Starmer’s pick for UK Ambassador to the US - went on TV to demand Zelensky sign the deal and be the first to declare a ceasefire. The government then declared that wasn’t official policy, but it seems unlikely that Mandelson made such statements without any consultation, unless there is no strategy at all at the top. What that speaks to is a likely scenario, that Starmer is simply trying to get some approximation of Trump’s deal through, and everything else is sugarcoating and posturing.

So when Starmer does not in fact achieve his original red lines on Ukraine, what then? The problem is none of this being interrogated. What matters is the vibes, not the substance.

The big picture, of course, is the crisis of Western power. That has reached such an acute stage that its central basis - an alliance between most of Europe and the US - is disintegrating.

So far, Starmer has hiked defence spending by butchering international aid. The government was already on course to cut social security spending and some public services: increased military expenditure is likely to make those cuts even deeper. The same story will be replicated across Europe - after austerity played a pivotal role in the rise of radical right-wing movements. Starmer basks in Churchillian mood music now. But the real story is the growing turmoil afflicting the Western world, and the dark places that may lead.