Andrew Gilligan: Starmer is following Blair across Powell’s transatlantic bridge to nowhere

Andrew Gilligan is a writer and former No10 adviser to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak.

Did you notice how, right after Sir Keir Starmer’s foreign policy successes last month, articles appeared in all the papers crediting much of it to Jonathan Powell?

Powell, the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, is, we learned, “revered in Whitehall circles” for his “masterful diplomacy,” a “calm and seasoned operator who does not seek the limelight,” “as modest as he is effective” and with a “talent at self-deprecation.”

Yet somehow this modest, self-deprecating, non limelight-seeking maestro ended up starring in the broadsheets, and on the BBC website, as “driving the strategy,” “among its architects”, and playing a “key role… behind the scenes.” How distressing it must have been for him!

After the shocking treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office, Powell, we were told, was instrumental in getting the US and Ukraine back together at talks in Jeddah – though not instrumental enough actually to be present, it seems. Excitable “Labour figures” even claimed it as Starmer’s potential “Falklands moment,” according to the BBC.

But three weeks on, what Starmer called this “remarkable breakthrough” is looking less special.

Russia has rejected the 30-day truce proposed in Jeddah, except on unacceptable terms, and is accused of breaching the partial ceasefire to which it did agree. Washington has toughened its demands for a rapacious mineral deal, and there is no sign of the US security guarantees and support without which a peace might take hold.

Meanwhile Starmer’s “coalition of the willing” seems stalled, with not much willingness outside Britain and France. In another area, even British hopes of an exemption from US tariffs seem (at the time of writing) to have been dashed.

This could all change very quickly – it is the Trump administration, after all. But that simply underlines the foolishness of Britain claiming a “key role” in a policy so far beyond our control; beyond the control of anyone, save Vladimir Putin and a quixotic handful in Washington DC.

We have seen this movie before. Powell was Tony Blair’s most senior adviser during the Iraq war. He and Starmer, or people briefing on their behalf, are going through a similar cycle of over-egged claims and vainglorious beliefs about Britain’s role and potential for influence: claims and beliefs which ended in disaster for Blair and Britain, and which might lead Starmer, too, into a trap.

The Prime Minister said a few weeks ago that he wanted to act as the “bridge” between Washington and Europe, telling the BBC: “My driving purpose has been to bridge this, if you like, and get us back to the central focus.” Blair and Powell thought they could be bridges in 2003, too; they thought they could at least tweak US policy for their own purposes.

But even a much more conventional US administration cared little for what Britain wanted, and did, of course, exactly what it believed to be in its own interest.

“This idea of Britain being a bridge between Europe and America is all Powell,” one friend of his was quoted as saying. “His fundamental guiding principle is that the UK must stay close to the US regardless of who is in the White House.”

But bridges get walked over. Or, to further abuse metaphors, the distance between Europe and America might be too great for even the longest bridge. As in 2003, Britain could end up losing out on both sides, squeezed both ways, its impotence humiliatingly exposed to everyone.

True, some things are different now. Britain is not estranged from its major European allies, France and Germany, as it was over Iraq. But we are nowhere near the end of this yet.

One risk is that we find ourselves trying to sell to the Ukrainians, to the rest of Europe and to the wider world some Trump-approved peace deal which is odious and wrong – which steals Ukraine’s wealth, for example, or formalises unacceptable rewards for Russian aggression.

Another is that we find ourselves pretending to the world that Putin will keep to any deal for a moment longer than it suits him. And we might still end up in an Afghanistan-style military mess on the ground.

Many British prime ministers, Blair included, turn from the frustrations of domestic policy to foreign affairs, albeit not as swiftly as has Starmer. But, even in more promising arenas than this, it seldom works for them politically. To voters, foreign triumphs count for little against GP appointments.

Maybe Starmer and Powell are realising this. The latter’s legendary modesty seems to have reasserted itself; the briefings have died down.

For now, in their overall approach to Trump, Starmer and Powell are probably doing the best they can. It is vital the US be kept on board as far as possible. Even in the Cold War, when Britain was spending 7 per cent of GDP on defence, Europe couldn’t protect itself without the Americans.

But Starmer’s Falklands – a short, self-contained, British-only conflict with a clear and quick win – this is not. It’s messy, humiliating work, biting your tongue and saying things that you know, and everyone else knows, are untrue.

It’s brown-nosing. It’s rolling with the punches. It’s not something we should boast about, or raise expectations for, or hope to make political capital from. And at some point, not yet, we may have to say: enough.