Sarah Ingham: Starmer’s martial bravado is covering his retreat on the home front

Dr Sarah Ingham is the author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.          

Less than a fortnight ago, Sir Keir Starmer committed British “boots on the ground and planes in the air” to defend post-conflict Ukraine.

Given the torrid start to Labour’s time in office (the unedifying addiction to freebies, alienating farmers and pensioners, credibility-destroying CV falsehoods, an economy-destroying Budget) the Prime Minister and his advisers turn, unsurprisingly, to poll-boosting war.

Since last July, Sir Keir has appeared eager to “do a geographic” – addict-speak for escaping from, rather than facing up to, difficulties. Jaunts by taxpayer-funded private jet are far jollier than Labour’s National Insurance hike on businesses.

Donald Trump’s abrupt withdrawal of US military support from Ukraine has galvanised Europe. Leaders sprang into action… to talk among themselves. Their meetings, whether in Paris or Lancaster House, were irrelevant. “The room where it happens”, to quote Hamilton, is in Washington or Jeddah.

Since February 2022, some of NATO’s European members have repeatedly demanded that American taxpayers do more to help Kyiv – while being reluctant to restock their own armaments’ cupboards, or properly fund defence.

With a Trump-brokered Moscow-Kyiv deal in the offing, Starmer wants British personnel on Ukrainian soil and into its airspace as peacekeepers. This is ill-advised grandstanding; he should be mindful of the mission creep that has characterised recent British military operations.

In August 1969, when Northern Ireland was riven by sectarian rioting, the Wilson government approved the “temporary” deployment of British troops to aid the civilian authorities.

However, the Catholic community rapidly became disillusioned with the military; the battle for local hearts and minds was lost. Soldiers’ presence fuelled the rise of paramilitary groups, including the Provisional IRA, whose mission was “troops out”.

Internment, Bloody Sunday, and Operation Motorman, involving more than 21,000 personnel, added to the impression that, in 1972, Northern Ireland was on the brink of civil war. Terrorist bombing of mainland Britain intensified, seen two years later in Birmingham, Guildford, Woolwich and in the M62 coach attack.

Operation Banner ended in 2007, almost 40 years after it began.

Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito claimed he was the leader of a country with two alphabets, three languages, four religions, five nationalities, and six republics. At the end of the Cold War, the federation fractured; by 1991, war had broken out within, and between, three of its former states: Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

This messy three-way conflict on the EU’s doorstep came to be played out in Bosnia. British troops joined a United Nations’ peacekeeping force in October 1992, escorting UN humanitarian aid convoys.

There was no peace to keep. The siege of Sarajevo, home of the 1984 Winter Olympics, came to symbolise the Bosnian conflict. One of the “new wars” described by Mary Kaldor, it featured ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and warlordism. In February 1994, NATO took over and airstrikes followed. Ditching their pale blue UN peacekeepers’ berets, British military personnel could demonstrate what one of their commanders, Rupert Smith, later identified as the utility of force.

An expanded NATO operation in Afghanistan began in 2006, following the successful ousting of the ruling Taliban in December 2001 after the 9/11 attacks. A muddled mission – counterterrorism, stabilisation and nation-building – quickly morphed into combat. A series of Rorke’s Drift-like battles were fought across Helmand province.

By 2008, the civilian public back home was unconvinced about the government’s reasoning for our boys being out in Afghanistan, especially when they saw many making a final melancholy journey home through Wootton Bassett in a Union flag-draped coffin. The public’s moral support for soldiers was balanced by its opposition to what academics called “Blair’s wars and Brown’s budgets”.

Like his Labour predecessors, Starmer seems keen to deploy the military. He should be mindful that the fog of war often descends on peacekeeping operations. British “boots on the ground and planes in the skies” is a good, headline-grabbing soundbite, but smacks of the glib over-promising that came easily to Boris Johnson.

Even if the necessary manpower and kit were available, the Ukrainian ground and airspace is hardly Northern Ireland, which was a home match. (“As British as Finchley.”) The battle-hardened Russian forces are not rag-tag irregulars: friendly puppet regimes in Kabul cannot be compared with the Kremlin, with its arsenal of nuclear weapons and imaginably-itchy trigger fingers.

On Wednesday, Labour’s Emily Thornberry claimed on behalf of Jonathan Powell, the National Security Advisor, the credit for making progress towards peace by providing a security guarantee to Ukraine. This Blair-era re-tread is rounding up Europe’s ‘Coalition of the Willing’, a phrase which, alas, takes us straight back to 2003.

Many across the Middle East and in the Global South have not forgotten the American-led, UK-backed invasion of Iraq, which they regard as illegitimate, illegal, and a breach of international norms. Powell is linked to a military misadventure that makes it difficult, in the context of sovereign territory, for the UK to claim any moral high ground over Moscow.

Those field marshals manqués calling for the continuation of Ukraine conflict can always rouse themselves from their armchairs, follow the sterling example of Jack Lopresti, the former Conservative MP, and join Ukraine’s International Brigade.

Unlike the rest of the sclerotic state sector, Britain’s Armed Forces bristle with can-do. No wonder the Prime Minister seeks to use them.

But when, at some time in the future, these soldiers are ex-servicemen, will the government be prosecuting them, just as Labour is currently hounding those who served in Northern Ireland?

Foreign adventures are always useful for governments unpopular at home, providing opportunities to don a flak jacket, wrap themselves in the Union flag, and forget about dreary domestic matters.

But voters aren’t naïve: they have clocked that Sir Keir seems more interested in the sovereignty of Crimea than the Chagos Islands and appears keener on policing Ukraine’s borders than the UK’s.