As Keir Starmer prepares to vacate 10 Downing Street, his unwavering opposition to Vladimir Putin has been hailed as his finest, most ‘statesmanlike’ achievement. Ruairidh Brown argues this assessment is fundamentally mistaken. Starmer stretched the trope of British leaders re-fighting the Second World War to its breaking point

Starmer’s policy on Ukraine has gained extensive praise as he leaves office. A broad consensus of world leaders – including Ursula von der Leyen and Volodymyr Zelenskyy – alongside people in the media and academia, have highlighted this as a defining demonstration of British leadership.

Yet Starmer's approach to Russia is only a continuation of the Conservative foreign policy that preceded him. Indeed, Starmer threatened to expel anyone from the Labour party who challenged this orthodoxy.

World leaders similarly praised former PM Boris Johnson – the complete antithesis to ‘Mr Rules’ Starmer – for positioning Britain as Kyiv’s vanguard supporter. For Johnson, this role offered a convenient distraction from Brexit and pandemic scandals. Starmer’s supposed statesmanship is a reperformance of the man he labelled a ‘coward’ not ‘a leader’.

The Churchillian mythology

Starmer and Johnson’s ‘statesmanship’ nevertheless represents a trope of British leadership dating back to the Second World War, and a particular pathology for wanting to continually re-fight it.

Britain’s war narrative frames the UK as the moral vanguard who first confronted Hitler; continued to fight the Nazi war machine single-handed; and played a pivotal role in toppling the Third Reich.

Churchill encapsulated this in his wartime rhetoric:

We were the first, in this ancient island, to draw the sword against tyranny

Winston Churchill, 8 May 1945

Despite historians debunking this narrative, it remains central to British collective memory. The idea that the UK serves the common good as the first and most consistent defender of global freedoms has become a core component of British identity.

This story eased Britain’s transition from Empire: Britain’s rapid fall from world hegemon neatly framed as a Pyrrhic sacrifice to save the world from the true evil of Hitler.

It also created expectations of how Britain should maintain global leadership going forward: as the vanguard crusader for liberal values against the evil of authoritarianism.

The crusader’s dilemma

Playing the crusader provides Britain with a sense of post-war status. However, the need to continually play it creates a structural dilemma.

Carl Schmitt, writing from the losing side of an Anglo-American ‘crusade’, offered a definitive critique of this mindset. He accused London of conflating morality and politics, a move that betrayed the eschatology thinking of international liberalism.

In this view, Britain fought in the service of humanity, spreading democratic capitalism to establish world peace. This subsequently cast London’s opponents as working against, not just Britain, but humanity itself: ‘evil’ ‘outlaws’ who must be eradicated to fulfil the liberal eschaton.

A member of the Nazi Party, bitter at his treatment by the Allies, Schmitt’s weaponised eschatology to reveal the humanity-stripping function of Anglophone liberalism.

This, however, misses the central dilemma of the crusader pathology.

Taken from the crusader’s perspective, eschatology is undesirable. If a state defines its international role by defending global freedom against authoritarianism, victory in the ‘final crusade’ terminates its rationale for being. In liberal heaven, the crusader-state is as purposeful as a firefighter in a world that ceases to burn.

Playing the crusader provides Britain with a sense of post-war status, but to retain purpose, Britain must perpetually delay victory

To retain purpose, we must perpetually delay victory. Rather than linear eschatology, we require an ouroboric historical structure: one where the enemy is not vanquished but eternally returns.

Hitler’s eternal recurrence

Churchill began this ouroboric pattern immediately after Hitler’s downfall. He quickly pivoted to the ‘new shadow’ in Moscow that Britain was taking a leading role in confronting.

British leaders, from Anthony Eden, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair to David Cameron, have all sought to define Britain’s international standing by defending ‘global freedoms’ against authoritarian menaces; enemies as diverse as Gamal Abdel Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milošević, Islamic Extremism and, now, Putin, cast in the role of the Hitleresque villain.

Blair captured this ouroboric nature most acutely, declaring, on the eve of the Iraq War: ‘should Hitler appear again in the same form, we would know what to do’, but as history does not reveal ‘itself so plainly’, ‘each time is different’.

Hitler is a recurring shadow, that Britain can periodically confront to reaffirm international status

Hitler ceases to be a historical person, instead transcending into a mythological archetype of evil. He is a recurring shadow, that Britain can periodically confront to reaffirm international status.

The crusader exposed

Under Starmer’s premiership, the crusader performance has finally reached breaking point.

The Trump Administration has openly ridiculed London’s capabilities: mocking the once-unmatched ‘big bad Royal Navy’ and dismissing Starmer as ‘not Winston Churchill’.

While much of this derision stemmed from the Iran crisis, Trump exposed the hollowness of London’s posturing long before.

In a tense White House encounter, Trump directly asked Starmer ‘could you take on Russia by yourselves?’. By offering only awkward laughter in response, Starmer revealed the emptiness of Britain’s position in the absence of US power.

While European leaders may praise Starmer’s leadership, encounters with Trump revealed Britain’s inability to meaningfully crusade in the absence of London’s American cousins.

Indeed, London displayed its chronic weakness when Starmer attempted to lead despite Trump.

Military officials ridiculed as political theatre Starmer's idea of stationing troops in Ukraine. Later, in an embarrassing climbdown, Britain insisted stationing troops in Ukraine was all a French idea anyway.

Military leaders openly confessed Britain could not maintain direct war with Russia; the media declared London could not even defend its own island if Putin attacked.

Despite declaring intent to prepare the country for war, Defence Secretary John Healey resigned, claiming that the money needed to defend Britain was not forthcoming.

The crusader retired?

Defence spending is an immediate material concern for the next Prime Minister.

There is, however, a deeper ideational dilemma.

England is fiercely divided; the populist right frequently leading the polls.

The parties who govern Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland wish to end the British state.

If it is to survive, the UK needs a new story that will restore unity. This cannot be a perpetual refighting of the Second World War.

Hitler is dead. British leaders must resist recourse to necromancy whenever they wish to play the global statesman.