{"id":11923,"date":"2026-04-11T20:34:28","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:34:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/11923\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T20:34:28","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T20:34:28","slug":"dan-hodges-putin-can-smell-weakness-and-starmer-absolutely-reeks-of-it-hes-left-britain-facing-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/11923\/","title":{"rendered":"DAN HODGES: Putin can smell weakness\u2026 and Starmer absolutely reeks of it. He’s left Britain facing disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

For many, it was the moment Ed Miliband lost the 2015 General Election<\/a>. Was he tough enough to stand up to Putin<\/a>, he was asked by Jeremy Paxman<\/a> in the pivotal leader\u2019s debate. \u2018Hell, yes, I\u2019m tough enough,\u2019 Labour<\/a>\u2019s youthful leader responded, with all the strength and conviction of a choirboy trying to muster the courage to take his first illicit drag of a cigarette behind the vestry. The audience laughed. And a few days later so did the British people, as they handed David Cameron<\/a> an upset majority.<\/p>\n

Last week Keir Starmer<\/a> faced his own Putin Test. And failed it just as miserably.<\/p>\n

On March 25 the Government announced \u2013 to much fanfare \u2013 that it would begin to interdict the \u2018Shadow Fleet\u2019 funnelling fuel, arms and other supplies in support of Russia<\/a>\u2019s war in Ukraine. \u2018Shadow fleet set to be interdicted in UK waters in latest blow to Russia,\u2019 declared the Downing Street<\/a> press release. \u2018British military will be able to board shadow fleet vessels transiting UK waters as the UK steps up its pressure on Putin.\u2019<\/p>\n

So on Wednesday Putin decided to call Starmer\u2019s bluff. The Admiral Grigorovich, a guided missile frigate, and two tankers entered the English Channel<\/a> at around 9am and proceeded on a leisurely course eastwards past the Isle of Wight and up into the North Sea.<\/p>\n

There was no interdiction. No boarding. Instead they were merely ushered on their way by a single vessel of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. Starmer and Putin had gone eyeball to eyeball. And Sir Keir blinked first.<\/p>\n

Over the past month, Starmer\u2019s allies have been roaming the Commons, peddling a new line in their latest attempt to reboot his short-circuiting premiership.<\/p>\n

\"In <\/p>\n

In 2015, Ed Miliband was asked by Jeremy Paxman if he was tough enough to stand up to Putin. \u2018Hell, yes, I\u2019m tough enough,\u2019 Ed replied<\/p>\n

\"Over <\/p>\n

Over the past week, SIr Keir Starmer\u2019s foreign policy has imploded, writes Dan Hodges<\/p>\n

Their narrative asserts that we live in uniquely dangerous times, and with war raging in the Middle East, and the Russian bear stalking the West, Labour MPs should not take the risk of unseating their leader. What I described a few weeks ago as the \u2018Get Burnham, Get Nuked\u2019 strategy. But the events of the past seven days have revealed an alternative truth. Which is that we are indeed facing a moment of desperate global peril. And Keir Starmer is temperamentally, and politically, incapable of meeting it.<\/p>\n

The Prime Minister\u2019s supporters continue to maintain the fiction he is some sort of master of diplomacy. On Wednesday, as Putin was commandeering the Dover Straits and HMS Dragon was stuck in port in the Mediterranean, they were trying to spin the line he was building a global coalition to open the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n

Yet the reality is that over the past week Starmer\u2019s foreign policy has imploded. The start of his premiership was marked by confusion and drift. But one area where he was crystal clear was on his international priorities.<\/p>\n

At the top was his desire to forge and cement a relationship with Donald Trump. He would, we were told, become \u2018the Trump whisperer\u2019. The siren forces on the Left of his party would be ignored. The simplistic binary option of choosing between Europe and the US would be rejected.<\/p>\n

And what has this supposedly deft statecraft delivered? The spectacle of Starmer feebly declaring he\u2019s \u2018fed up\u2019 with the US President, while frantically announcing a new pivot back towards the EU. It\u2019s true the Prime Minister cannot be blamed for Trump\u2019s increasingly deranged and megalomaniacal interventions. But it was his decision to place all his eggs in the MAGA basket. And even now he remains in complete denial over the global realpolitik confronting Britain.<\/p>\n

On Friday Defence Secretary John Healey was despatched to tell the London Defence Conference that the US remained \u2018absolutely locked into\u2019 Nato. Locked in? A week ago Trump was asked if he was considering Nato withdrawal. \u2018Oh yes, I would say it\u2019s beyond reconsideration,\u2019 he replied. \u2018I was never swayed by Nato. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.\u2019<\/p>\n

Starmer\u2019s strength in foreign policy affairs was meant to be that his time as Director of Public Prosecutions \u2013 where he had a key role in liaising with the US on counter-terror policy \u2013 had placed him at the heart of the security establishment. But as the pillars of 80 years of transatlantic co-operation collapse around him, that is now proving his undoing.<\/p>\n

He is too much a prisoner of that establishment to be able to adapt to the new world disorder.<\/p>\n

He is also too much a prisoner of his own instincts. As we\u2019ve seen over the course of the Middle East conflict, he has come to equate inaction with statesmanship.<\/p>\n

Impotence he recasts in his own mind as commendable patience and caution. Polite diplomatic agreement with his moderate rhetoric is mistaken for influence.<\/p>\n

All of which is creating a deeply dangerous vacuum. \u2018Defence investment is the Prime Minister\u2019s highest priority,\u2019 the hapless Healey was also forced to parrot on Friday. But it\u2019s simply another fiction.<\/p>\n

The Iran war \u2013 a war we were not supposed to even have been involved in \u2013 has exposed the parlous state of our defences. Yet a year on from Starmer claiming Britain was now on \u2018a war footing\u2019, the Defence Investment Plan has not seen the light of day, nor even has a date for publication. And here is the other brutal truth. Even if Starmer genuinely wanted to begin to rearm the nation, he wouldn\u2019t be able to. He is a Labour leader at a time of austerity. He has neither the authority, nor political capital, to place the defence of the realm at the top of his agenda.<\/p>\n

\"Starmer\u00a0has <\/p>\n

Starmer\u00a0has neither the authority, nor political capital, to place the defence of the realm at the top of his agenda, writes Dan Hodges<\/p>\n

\"Vladimir <\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin\u00a0was commandeering the Dover Straits on Wednesday, while\u00a0HMS Dragon was stuck in port in the Mediterranean<\/p>\n

His party won\u2019t allow it. The idea Starmer can convince his MPs to vote through cuts to the NHS, welfare, education and investment in Britain\u2019s hollowed-out public services to pay for tanks and bombs and drones is a pipe dream.<\/p>\n

Which leads us to the final truth. No leader can enjoy respect abroad unless they have first earned respect at home. And few prime ministers of the modern era have plunged to such pitifully low esteem, so rapidly, as Sir Keir.<\/p>\n

Labour ministers are putting the finishing touches to their leadership campaigns. Labour MPs are preparing their next parliamentary ambush. The voters are planning to deliver their own contemptuous verdict in next month\u2019s local elections. And Putin, and Trump, and Britain\u2019s other adversaries know it. In Moscow they can smell Starmer\u2019s weakness. And they are already planning how next to exploit it.<\/p>\n

That is the true danger facing Britain. We now have no foreign policy. We have no defence policy. We have no major strategic alliances. Keep Starmer. Get nuked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For many, it was the moment Ed Miliband lost the 2015 General Election. Was he tough enough to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11924,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,169,395,5623,94,183,2016,484],"class_list":{"0":"post-11923","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-dailymail","10":"tag-debate","11":"tag-jeremy-paxman","12":"tag-keir-starmer","13":"tag-labour","14":"tag-nato","15":"tag-russia"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116387988277652875","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}