Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are the undisputed leaders of Europe—or at least that’s what the British Prime Minister and French president hoped to convey during their three-day summit in London this week.
At this stage, it’s hard to disagree. Despite Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s aim to give Germany the strongest conventional military in Europe, Berlin is still reticent to stick its neck out on behalf of the entire continent—and it’s unlikely that certain other European countries would support German military leadership in any case. Poland, meanwhile, might spend more on defence as a proportion of GDP than anybody else in Nato, but it lacks the institutional heft or influence to organise a pan-European response.
Starmer and Macron, for better or worse, have taken the weight on their shoulders because nobody else was going to do it. The so-called “Coalition of the Willing” in support of Ukraine is in essence a British-French mechanism designed as much to send a message to Trump’s Washington as it is to back Kyiv. And the message is clear: Europe, or at least Europe’s most significant powers, are taking responsibility for their own neighbourhood.
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Events on Ukraine-Russia
