Starmer plans trickiest visit to the Oval Office

UK Prime Minister seeks US Security pledge

British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, will on Thursday visit the Oval Office.

According to online media reports, the purpose of Starmer’s visit is to get President Donald Trump away from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He is also said to plan to extract security guarantees for Ukraine following an eventual peace deal and to save the transatlantic alliance.

His visit, analysts have said, appear to have slim chance of success.

This is because on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron of France, visited on a similar quest, but got no concrete assurances despite rekindling his Bromance with Trump.

The task before the more reserved Starmer became even more complex as he flew over the Atlantic on Wednesday.

Trump, in the first Cabinet meeting of his new term, dismissed the idea of robust US security guarantees for Ukraine.

But Starmer sees the security guarantees as vital to ensuring that any peace agreement can endure.

Starmer argued that a peace agreement would not be viable without such a US pledge, saying that what is needed is lasting peace not a ceasefire.

Starmer also said he would press the US president for another undertaking he has so far been uninterested to give.

This undertaking is a “backstop” for a “reassurance” force that Britain and France have said they are ready to send to Ukraine in the event of a peace agreement.

Starmer believes that Europe’s militaries lack the logistical, intelligence and anti-aircraft missile assets needed to secure such a force on their own, without the US.

According to reports, Starmer said en route to the US that his concern was that, if there is a ceasefire without a backstop, it will give the Russian President the opportunity to wait and to come again because his ambition in relation to Ukraine is pretty obvious for all to see.

Starmer and Macron hurried to Washington after Trump sent shockwaves through the West by telling Europeans they must take primary responsibility for their own security.

Trump had also taken sides with Putin over the war in Ukraine, which he said was started by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Starmer told parliament on Tuesday that Britain now faced a world where “everything has changed.”

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