Sir Keir Starmer has shown “effective leadership”, “spoken for Britain” and not “put a foot wrong” with his diplomacy in support of Ukraine over the past week, his domestic political opponents have declared.
The plaudits in the House of Commons on Monday hailed from the opposition benches as the UK prime minister’s rivals lined up to praise his handling of talks with US President Donald Trump, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European allies.
They highlighted how a crisis that has made the security of Europe appear more fragile than at any period since the end of the cold war has been good politically for the domestically unpopular premier.
“After a torrid few months, this situation has given Starmer the chance to define himself more and remind people why they picked him: he’s calm and straight down the line,” said Luke Tryl, executive director of the More in Common think-tank.
He added: “People in focus groups say they’re worried about the state of the world — they want a bit of that calmness. Voters also like seeing Britain leading the way.”
Starmer’s efforts to shore up Zelenskyy and secure a US security guarantee for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia — despite Trump’s hostility towards the Ukrainian president — have won the British leader a “war bounce” in his personal approval ratings, according to the think-tank.
Its survey, conducted between last Friday and Sunday, showed that Starmer gained six points on the question of who would make the better prime minister on a week before, propelling him ahead of Nigel Farage, leader of the rightwing populist Reform UK party. His approval ratings have also hit a three-month high, but remain deeply negative at -28.
The Labour leader met Trump at the White House last Thursday before hosting Zelenskyy and other European leaders in London on Sunday. The survey showed that 56 per cent of Britons believed Starmer’s handling of negotiations about Ukraine reflected well on the government.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the Commons that she had been “glad” to witness Starmer embracing Zelenskyy in London, just days after Trump gave the Ukrainian leader a dressing down in the Oval Office.
Badenoch, who has attacked Starmer in the past over tax rises, net zero goals and education policy, added of the British prime minister: “I welcome all of his actions this weekend to convene the European leaders, as well as the focus on economic security.”
Other Tories joined in the tributes: James Cleverly, former home secretary, said Starmer had “not really put a foot wrong”; former development secretary Andrew Mitchell praised his “effective leadership”; and ex-security minister Tom Tugendhat said he had “spoken for Britain”.
Scottish National party leader Stephen Flynn said he wished to “commend” the prime minister on his performance, while Labour politicians were even more effusive, with Dame Emily Thornberry, chair of the Commons’ foreign affairs committee, branding Starmer’s moves “pitch perfect”.
Such rave reviews are a welcome reprieve for a Labour leader whose personal and party ratings have plunged since taking office last July, following a rocky start to his term. Infighting in No 10, a row about freebies and a sluggish pace on critical policy reforms beset Starmer’s first months in power.
There has not been wholesale consensus on the UK’s next steps, however. Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey called in the Commons for the UK to scale down its “dependency” on the US, arguing that Trump was “not a reliable ally with respect to Russia”.
The proposal was rejected by Starmer, but the sentiment appears to be aligned with a significant proportion of voters.
Almost as many Britons — 42 per cent — want Trump’s invitation for a second state visit to the UK to be cancelled, as the 43 per cent who want it to remain, according to a YouGov poll on Monday.
Moreover, the survey found that 67 per cent of the UK public said Trump was to blame for the argument in the White House last week, while only 7 per cent said Zelenskyy was to blame.
Even Farage grudgingly complimented Starmer for having “used Brexit freedoms . . . effectively” to try and form a bridge between the US and Europe, though he noted the “irony” of a “Remainer prime minister” doing so.
Farage, unlike his rival on the right Badenoch, has refused to voice unequivocal support for Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian war effort over the past week.
The Reform leader, who is a friend of Trump, has elicited criticism for previously suggesting that the west “provoked” Russia to invade Ukraine with the eastward expansion of Nato.
Farage told LBC earlier on Monday that Zelenskyy “played it very badly” in his meeting with Trump on Friday and was “very unwise to tell the Americans what would happen to them if they didn’t back him”.
“I wouldn’t expect a guest to be rude to me in my own house, I’d expect them to treat me with respect,” he said, adding that if he turned up to the White House “I’d make sure I was wearing a suit and my shoes were cleaned.”
Starmer’s moves in recent days go further than diplomacy; he has slashed the UK’s aid budget in order to fund an uplift in defence spending. Further difficult fiscal decisions are anticipated in the spending review, set to conclude in June, which could dent Starmer’s reputation with voters.
The UK premier has also offered to put British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force. Trump has resisted providing a security guarantee for any such deployments.
Still, for now, Starmer’s “statesmanlike leadership” over the past few days has probably been “more important for fending off the threat posed by Reform than anything he could do on immigration”, said Jane Green, political-science professor at Oxford university.
Other analysts argued the effect of Starmer’s bounce was likely to be shortlived. Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, said: “I’d have thought it’s pretty temporary. Most people’s views of leaders is not based on foreign policy, it’s on delivery on domestic issues.”
