Humiliating question Keir Starmer faces at NATO summit that he is powerless to answer.H
www.express.co.uk/news/politics/2222112/starmer-limp-into-nato-summit
Humiliating question Keir Starmer faces at NATO summit that he is powerless to answer
Aaron Newbury3-4 minutes 6/26/2026
Starmer heads to Ankara as a lame duck PM (Image: Getty)
Soon we might have to start feeling sorry for Keir Starmer as he’s forced to limp across the world stage and carry out the latest ritualistic humiliation of his outgoing premiership. In July he will crawl to Ankara for the latest NATO summit, there to face the strutting men and women of the world powers and pretend he belongs at the table.
We can assume Keir will be asked what he intends to do to ensure Britain pulls its weight and does its bit to defend Western civilisation. The trouble is that nobody really cares anymore about what his answer might be – they’d rather ask Andy Burnham. Because the moment Keir blubbed that he would be stepping down on Monday, what little authority the trappings of office still afforded him simply evaporated.
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Now at most he has just a few weeks left in Downing Street.
So when the big boys ask him how Britain will meet the target of spending 5% of GDP on defence by 2035, what exactly is a departing Prime Minister supposed to pledge?
I would assume he will look meekly at Mark Rutte and ask if he knows any removal firms that might do him mates’ rates.
It’s not like he can do much else. Starmer cannot stand there and bind his successor to spending plans he has no power left to declare.
Nor can he promise cash he will not be there to spend. In effect, he can do and say absolutely nothing of worth to anyone.
Already he will amble to Ankara with little more than an empty briefcase of undelivered pledges. His own Defence Investment Plan – the document that blew his Government apart – commits Britain to a miserable 2.68% by 2030, billions short of what the military says it needs.
Starmer’s defence plan blew his Government apart (Image: Getty)
His now-former Defence Secretary, John Healey, quit over it – a resignation that, to my eye, amounted to telling us all we’d be better off running for the hills if the worst ever came.
Al Carns, a decorated Royal Marine, marched out with him. That sordid legacy of failure is what he goes to Turkey with.
What, then, is the point of sending him at all? A lame duck cannot lead, all he can do is quack and flap, smile for the cameras, and hope nobody asks him anything difficult.
As for his legacy, the verdict is already being written – and not by us. This week European leaders lined up to praise the outgoing Prime Minister, with Poland’s Donald Tusk purring that, thanks to Keir, “one could forget about Brexit for a moment”.
There, in a single sentence, is the epitaph of this premiership. Loved in Brussels yet found wanting in Britain, and off to Ankara with no money, no mandate, and no future.
