Starmer Makes a Final Trip to Kyiv as the Commons Rises
Sir Keir Starmer travels to Kyiv today on his last foreign trip as Prime Minister, meeting President Zelensky to pledge that Britain’s support for Ukraine “will always endure”, days before he hands power to Andy Burnham. The visit, coming hours after a fresh Russian missile strike on the city, closes a premiership whose Ukraine record was the one part of his foreign policy to draw consistent cross-party praise. The Commons rises for its summer recess today, meaning the new Prime Minister will not face the despatch box until September.
A farewell trip to Kyiv is a deliberate choice of legacy: whatever the domestic failures that brought him down, Starmer wants his final act as Prime Minister to be a statement of steadfastness towards Ukraine, the cause on which his record is least contested. It also serves a national purpose, signalling continuity to Kyiv and to Moscow at the very moment Britain changes leader, an assurance that the support will outlast the man. For Burnham, inheriting that commitment is one of the least controversial parts of the job, but also one of the most expensive and open-ended, and the new coalition on European missile defence will test how far Britain is willing to go. The recess buys the incoming government a summer to form itself before the Commons returns. Watch what Starmer secures or promises in Kyiv, how Burnham frames his own approach to the war, and the state of the front as the fighting grinds on.