25 Comments
User's avatar
Gilgamech's avatar

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.

Expand full comment
Ian Proud's avatar

Thanks. And, shame, indeed.

Expand full comment
intp1's avatar

Have u thought about putting a headline and blurb of ur Substack Posts on X ? with maybe a graphic? I follow you on X and it would remind me when you have a new post (Or any other publication/Interview for that matter)

Thanks for your work.

Expand full comment
Paulo Aguiar's avatar

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 The reality is, in a world defined by hard power and realpolitik, clinging to moral posturing and outdated sanctions playbooks makes you a spectator, not a player.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.

Expand full comment
ChatterX's avatar

Stormer is just another puppet.

The real PM is Richard Moore

Expand full comment
Gilgamech's avatar

Who else of note was excluded from the call? Please tell me Kaja Kallas was not on the call?

Expand full comment
Ian Proud's avatar

When Kaja gets called before Keir, we should all emigrate..

Expand full comment
hk's avatar

Who were the European leaders actually in on the call?

Expand full comment
Ian Proud's avatar

VdL, Merz, Macron, Meloni, Stubb.

Expand full comment
hk's avatar

Thanks! That does make Starmer's exclusion really noticeable! (Altho inclusion of Finland is also a bit interesting.)

Expand full comment
English Voice's avatar

Thanks Ian. Starmer lives in a world of make belief.

Expand full comment
Ian Proud's avatar

He seems to.

Expand full comment
Jean Marie Wilson-Main's avatar

I have, personally, given up hope that Starmer will do anything useful about anything at all. He talks, occasionally, mysteriously in my opinion, actually making sense, but this has, so far anyhow, never led to anything useful. Why change now? Let’s just continue to be a useless lump.

Expand full comment
Alfred Brown's avatar

This: "Starmer’s exclusion is a huge missed opportunity for Britain to play a positive role" ~ please enlightened me WHEN, in the last century, has Britain played a positive role in world politics. I suppose the British think Lord Balfour "gifting" Palestine to the European Jews was such a moment.

Expand full comment
Ian Proud's avatar

I live in hope that there should be a first time for everything positive…

Expand full comment
barnabus's avatar

By the end of 1916, Britain (and France) were losing the war vis-a-vis Germany. If Germany had managed to seize French ports beyond the Channel, Britain's naval supremacy would have come to an end.

Expand full comment
Dmitriy Milkin's avatar

An excellent analysis indeed! And so now, logically as noted by the Russian delegation at the Istanbul meeting, talks should continue in parallel with the struggle, as has been the case historically in quoted instances such as with the US and Vietnam and Russia and Sweden.

Expand full comment
ANN HEFFERAN's avatar

Thanks Ian for the latest. This is promising!

Expand full comment
Sad Ferret's avatar

It’s becoming very apparent Starmer doesn’t run the country, I don’t think Sunak did and Farage won’t either, something similar is happening in the US, they aren’t delivering, broken promise after broken promise.

Expand full comment
Bill Jones's avatar

John Helmer's analysis of the Putin/Trump ( I guess it should be Trump/Putin as Trump was the initiator but Primus inter pares requires P/T. ) call is a masterpiece of what journalism was and should be,

https://johnhelmer.net/intelligence-briefing-decoding-putin-statement-after-the-trump-call-trump-tweet-after-putins-statement/

Expand full comment
Bill Jones's avatar

I think it would be a hoot if Trump indicted Starmer for election interference, He is on video boasting about sending hundreds of people to work for Harris. As Assange can testify the US and UK have a watertight extradition treaty, and it's not as is Starmer's a Head of State, merely a government functionary.

Expand full comment
Sue's avatar

He is a Fabian aka globalist aka eugenecist he doesn't have a closet, he has a gigantic walk-in-closet Hollywood style to hide the corpses. By now we already know how these people work

What else can he do? in the case of the Pope he can chose between obeying or martyrdom what

for him would mean heaven. But Larry the cat's neighbour it's now or never

Thank you to give us material for reflexion and keep our head working swiftly.

Expand full comment
intp1's avatar

Assigning any kind of respectability as a member of the human race to Starmer is I think a lost cause. You can see him behaving like a little dog conflicted by opposing commands in all policy matters. e.g. his extreme discomfort in tryng to maintain popularity with his electorate and following orders from Jerusalem. This usually results in 2-faced U-turns as in getting a US trade deal and trying his best to puncture the Ukraine peace for his Neo-lib overlords.

Expand full comment
John Brophy's avatar

Well that is good news - if Starmer is irrelevant on the world stage then it is only a matter of time that he will be ousted. However, these tyrants seem to be protected and acting out a script from a higher level (as was Boris), so I would not count him out yet. Part of that script is to ¨86 47¨ which means try again to bump off Trump, and that of course would be a game changer. They will stop at nothing now that they are on the ropes.

Expand full comment
Lola the Foreigner 송 로 라's avatar

Trump knows that 2TK only doing what his master Macron tells him to do.

#NotImportant

Expand full comment