"It is part of a new era in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union." This was announced by the British government on Monday at the unexpected summit between the Foreign Minister of this country, David Lammy, and the EU's High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, regarding the situation in Ukraine.
The result is that the British capital is hosting today a summit of military chiefs to discuss the technical aspects of the peace forces -actually, protection forces- in Ukraine, with a role unprecedented in the usual international politics of the United Kingdom. Great Britain is no longer perceived as the constant "no" that it was both within and outside the EU. It is also not what the very nationalist French President Charles de Gaulle referred to as the "Trojan horse of the United States in Europe", mainly because the US has no interest in Europe. So, the Trojan horse has been left without Greeks and has decided to lead the Trojans, who seem delighted to follow.
This is how Keir Starmer, the first Labour (Social Democrat) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a decade and a half, has found himself much closer to the European Union than his electoral program upon taking office last July had suggested. Starmer's European policy was, by his own decision, very modest, focusing on strengthening commercial relations and ending the latent hostility between London and Brussels.
It's not that the Prime Minister was not interested in foreign policy. On the contrary, in his first eight months in office, Starmer made 20 trips abroad. His apparent interest in what was happening in the rest of the world at the expense of the United Kingdom is one of the reasons why his popularity plummeted to the point that on January 8th, the British viewed the then US President-elect, Donald Trump, more favorably than their Prime Minister.
Since then, London has played a role in transatlantic relations not seen since almost two decades ago, during the most glorious period of the alliance between the also Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and the also Republican US President George W. Bush.
With Starmer, Great Britain has become the key point in what remains of the relationship between the two sides of the Atlantic. But with a difference. Unlike when Blair was in Downing Street, London has not needed to confront most European countries but rather exercises some leadership among them -and, incidentally, with the Canadians- in response to Trump's isolationism and his handing over of Ukraine to Russia. All this without breaking ties with the US.
It is a radical change in which the United Kingdom continues to play its cards of military strength, its soft power through the Commonwealth and the Monarchy, and its special relationship with the US. The fact that the UK is not in the EU, which for Trump is the US's number one enemy almost on par with China, is the final piece of that curious puzzle that the UK has managed to put together in this tumultuous 2025.
A puzzle in which, furthermore, Starmer did not choose the pieces but found himself with all of it. What he has done is combine them to strengthen the global presence of the United Kingdom and give it an unimaginable European leadership role until Donald Trump entered the White House on January 20th. And the public opinion seems pleased.
Blair burned his own bridges with support for the invasion of Iraq, to the point of laying the groundwork for the Labour defeat in 2010 that opened the door to a chaotic conservative decade and a half. For Starmer, his leap from Prime Minister to a nascent global statesman has worked well. Despite the drastic welfare state cuts announced this week, the Prime Minister's popularity, although still very low, has reached its highest levels since his brief honeymoon with voters last summer, which didn't even last 100 days and plummeted in the polls with appalling approval ratings. The British Prime Minister, along with Canada's Mark Carney and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky, is one of the world leaders who have benefited the most in their image from Trump's ultranationalism and expansionism.
And all this without the US President threatening to annex the UK -as with Canada- or letting Russia annex it -as with Ukraine.
The British Prime Minister has not needed to confront Trump. On the contrary, Starmer has played the conciliatory card with the US. He visited the White House and delivered a letter from Charles III inviting a second State visit to the UK, something unprecedented in history. In terms of political and economic realities, London has not imposed additional tariffs on US imports in response to those imposed by Trump, even though the latter affect them like any other Washington trading partner.
What Starmer has done is assume a leadership position. London is currently the center for coordinating aid to Ukraine in case of a US withdrawal. It is a position in which the Downing Street tenant seems comfortable. Starmer has the charisma of an accountant, which initially puts him at a disadvantage against Trump (as an undeclared rival) or Macron (as a competitor for the center stage). But precisely for that reason, he projects an image of solidity or trust, which is truly scarce in the current world.
His personality, therefore, which is a burden for winning elections, seems to be an asset in closed-door negotiations among international leaders. As explained in July in a blog by the London School of Economics by the Political Science professor at the University of Edinburgh Consuelo Thiers, who analyzed 14 interviews of Starmer with the help of a computer program, the British Prime Minister is very distrustful but tries to establish lasting relationships. And when negotiating, he focuses on what unites, not on what separates the interlocutors. These qualities seem particularly important for forging a coalition to aid Ukraine, although on the downside, Thiers argues that Starmer tends to start things and not finish them.