Britain left out in the cold by Trump on Ukraine peace talks
How Starmer found himself on the road to nowhere
Russia Ukraine peace talks are to restart immediately, but when Trump debriefed European leaders, Starmer was not on the call. Starmer has rendered himself completely irrelevant by sticking to the same tired approaches and blocking efforts at peace in Ukraine.
After Presidents Trump and Putin spoke for two hours today, 19 May, new impetus was injected in Russia-Ukraine negotiations towards a ceasefire. The Russian and Ukrainian delegations are now in contact and will start immediately preparations towards a second round of talks. After Vice President JD Vance’s meeting with Pope Leo, the Vatican is being touted as a possible venue. Clearly, direct engagement by the two Presidents is key to any progress being made to end the war. But when Trump phoned Zelensky and European leaders after the call, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was not included.
That may be because Trump has realised that Starmer has brought nothing new to the Ukraine peace process and, rather, is acting as a major brake on progress.
After a helpful, if tentative, first meeting for three years between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul on Friday 16 May, it was clear that neither side was in a hurry to schedule further talks. For his part, Zelensky had spent most of the day on 15 May trying his best to find a way out of sending a delegation to Istanbul and blaming Russia for it. Following the standard script, British and European leaders indulged him, blaming Russia whose bemused delegation waited patiently in Istanbul for someone to show up. It was only after direct intervention from President Erdogan and the USA, that Zelensky finally relented allowing for talks on Friday.
That first Istanbul meeting, however brief, and however accompanied by the normal Ukrainian briefing out that ‘Russia doesn’t want peace’, was nonetheless a vital first step forward. But, and as Vice President JD Vance said today, we had reached an impasse, and Trump appears determined to keep the pressure up to secure an elusive ceasefire.
As I have said many times before, this will only be possible if Russia feels that its position is acknowledged and compromises made, just as President Putin has indicated today his willingness to compromise in certain areas.
Unfortunately, Keir Starmer appears to have dug a trench with Zelensky against making any compromise, rooted in the fantasy that Ukraine can still, remarkably and against all the available evidence, win. Ahead of last week’s Istanbul meeting, British and European leaders had done their best to derail talks before they had even begun. Without a word being uttered, Starmer was threatening Russia with more sanctions if it did not agree to an immediate ceasefire, having already imposed sanctions on Victory Day, May 9. The European Union had mirrored the British move on 14 May, the day before the Istanbul talks had been scheduled to take place, with threats to impose even more sanctions. Even though the shadow fleet sanctions imposed by Britain and Europe are likely to have, at best, a negligible impact, they would have had a chilling effect on any Russian desire to settle.
This was a foolish move and, I am afraid to say, typical of the British foreign policy establishment. Aside from an almost psychopathic belief that Russia can and must be defeated, there is also an underlying and wholly unwarranted confidence in King Charles Street in Britain’s ability to influence US foreign policy and take it in directions we would prefer.
Starmer’s exclusion is a huge missed opportunity for Britain to play a positive role. Turning the clock back to 2 March, on a sunny day in London, he had convened European leaders and President Zelensky in Lancaster House at a landmark summit that launched a ‘coalition of the willing’ towards peace in Ukraine. This was the moment when, we were led to belief, Starmer would step into the breach and bridge the enormous gulf on Ukraine policy that had opened up after President Trump assumed office on 20 January. Nothing typified the radical shift in US foreign policy towards Ukraine more than the remarkable dressing down that Zelensky was given in the Oval Office by President Trump on 28 February.
The day prior, Starmer had enjoyed an altogether warmer reception in the Oval Office. Presenting an invitation from His Majesty the King for Trump to visit Britain for an historic state visit all the signs were that Britain’s Prime Minister had smelled the Starbucks; having become the most hawkish leader of a major European nation, he couldn’t act as a blocker against the new US President’s desire for peace in Ukraine while at the same time pushing for ambitious US-UK trade talks which had been on ice since Brexit. Starmer was acutely aware of the need to repair a dreadful pre-election relationship with Trump, having previously declared himself ‘anti-Trump’, a positive compliment compared to the insults thrown at the now US President by senior members of his government.
I was briefly and foolishly optimistic that Starmer was, after a non-descript first few months in office, taking the UK in a more positive direction to align with the US and bring the Ukraine war to a close. That optimism was, I fear, badly misplaced.
In truth, Starmer has brought absolutely nothing new to foreign policy, has not bridged the gap between Europe and the US and, instead, has fallen back on the standard policy prescriptions towards Russia that have never, not even once, proved effective since the Ukraine crisis started in 2014.
Today, at that same Lancaster House, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace, a place I have spent many an hour, Starmer hosted Ursula von Der Leyen for a first UK-EU Summit since Brexit. The big difference from March, when even the Tories were eulogising Starmer as a modern day Churchill, was that while the German Commission President was included in Trump’s group call with European leaders, Starmer was left out in the cold. Number 10 will try to spin this as the PM having other priorities, but that is nonsense. Ukraine is his biggest foreign policy portfolio and he would have moved everything on the calendar to make the call.
The cold truth is that the British Prime Minister has rendered himself completely irrelevant. And I have a sense of déjà vu at Britain being left out in the cold on Ukraine policy in 2025, just as it was in 2014 under David Cameron’s government. From his lofty goal in March of creating a bridge to the US, Starmer has found himself on the road to nowhere.
It’s never foolish to be optimistic. It is simply patriotic to hope that your country might act with rationality, honesty and courage. It is a shame we have been yet again disappointed.
Starmer’s absence from the call wasn’t a snub; it was a verdict. In geopolitics, relevance is earned, not inherited. And right now, Starmer is playing checkers on a chessboard where the pieces have already moved without him. The reality is, in a world defined by hard power and realpolitik, clinging to moral posturing and outdated sanctions playbooks makes you a spectator, not a player. Trump and Putin didn’t speak for two hours because they enjoy each other’s company. They did it because, whether you like them or not, they’re the ones capable of shaping outcomes.
Starmer, meanwhile, chose to double down on a failed strategy: appeasing European orthodoxy while ignoring the tectonic shift in US foreign policy. Washington isn’t interested in ideological purity; it’s pursuing results. And if the UK’s top diplomat can’t grasp that a sustainable peace requires compromise (not courtroom theatrics or symbolic sanctions), then why would anyone loop him into a serious negotiation? Starmer had a window to position Britain as a bridge between the US and EU. Instead, he parked the UK firmly in the “talk tough, do nothing” camp.
In this new order, where power flows through direct engagement and national interest, not legacy alliances or sentimental gestures, the cost of irrelevance is steep. Starmer’s just found that out the hard way.