ALL the world is a stage, but if you’re Sir Keir Starmer it is also a comfort blanket.
Since Labour’s local election drubbing the PM has been to Norway, Ukraine and Albania — with mixed results.
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Next month it’s summits in Canada and Holland, happily mingling once again with the global elite.
Meanwhile 170 Labour MPs may rebel on his benefits reforms. And his own side baulked so hard at his immigration clampdown they branded him Enoch Powell redux.
The country remains broken, waiting lists are going the wrong way again and the unions are electing head-bangers ready for strike chaos.
Warning lights flash everywhere; from Labour’s doomed pledge to build 1.5million houses to yet more jobs sacrificed upon Ed Miliband’s altar of Net Zero.
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And there must be a metaphor in the pothole the size of a washing machine that I hit while driving home from the airport on Friday after travelling with the PM on his latest international jolly.
Unpicking Brexit
Starmer genuinely believes the best way to spend his time is on great global matters, with the West up the creek unless something is done.
Yet he is far from the first occupant of No10 to leave his domestic woes behind to fight a higher cause.
But how is it going?
Another week of international affairs is coming up as he unveils his big Brexit reset that is going to trigger a lot of shouting.
The India deal was decent enough, but suggestions that a micro-accord sealed with the United States over tariff relief earlier this month is the long-sought post-Brexit US trade deal is highly misleading spin.
Sir Keir will make a big song and dance of his trio of deals secured in the space of three weeks later today, but given the PM now considers Reform his real opposition, I suspect crowing too loudly about unpicking Brexit and inviting tens of thousands of Europeans back to Britain will misfire.
But where Starmer does deserve some credit is Ukraine.
While peace is still a pipe dream, his stewardship of a new emerging power group has been noteworthy.
Britain, France, Germany and Poland are thick as thieves as the new so-called Coalition Of The Willing and things may be starting to turn a corner.
Western diplomats and politicians alike believe progress is being made, not least in realigning President Zelensky and Donald Trump after their sensational Oval Office bust-up in February.
This new quartet joined Zelensky in Kyiv two weeks ago, and met again on Friday in Albania.
Both times Starmer had Trump on the phone to speak to the five leaders after Zelensky and the US President reset their relationship while attending the Pope’s funeral in Rome last month.
Though not the first PM with a rocky domestic standing to devote their energies to defeating Putin, it is the right thing to do.
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The PM genuinely believes President Trump has a deeply held conviction for peace.
A million Russians have now been killed or wounded in this bloody war, with the state secret of Ukrainian casualties not as high, but still horrific.
Starmer has played a vital role in talking Zelensky off his ledge and round to the realities of the new world.
And it wasn’t an easy sell to Zelensky, who was both politically and morally opposed to laying down his weapons and accepting territory will never be won back by force alone.
But after meetings in Paris and London, he came round to the tactical position of the unconditional ceasefire offer, not least to flush out the Kremlin.
Starmer now believes that Russians intransigence is laid bare for the world — and, most importantly, President Trump — to see.
Putin continues to demand the Ukrainian armed forces be stripped back to barely a regiment, as well as sign up for not just neutrality but a bar from joining any alliance — be that Nato or bilateral security deals like the one they signed with the UK.
Yet in a chink of light, Russia simply sidestepped the ceasefire issue and sent negotiators to Turkey last week.
And there’s plenty to discuss; the Kremlin wants sanctions lifted and Ukraine wants frozen Russian assets diverted to rebuild their broken and battered nation.
How any lasting ceasefire will be policed in a way that deters future aggression remains woolly, but the tables have been turned once again on Putin.
Zelensky and Trump are united in calling for peace and that is a million miles from where we were in February.
And Starmer has played a central role in that.
Paying a major price
However it will all be moot for the PM unless Putin enters negotiations properly, and there are fears the tyrant continues to think he is winning after perhaps being fed a rose-tinted version of events.
But the reality is more complex.
As one Western official put it: “The Russians are making incremental advances and have been for some time but these are really quite small advances. They really are tiny and they have come at a very heavy cost in terms of manpower.’
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While Ukraine was outgunned in the early stages of the war, particularly in terms of artillery, “the materiel situation is more balanced now”.
Indigenous arms factories and thousands of cheap drones have helped to level things out on the battlefield, and it will get harder and harder for the Russians to keep going without paying a major price at home.
Falling oil prices and a lack of men to feed into the meat grinder leaves Putin with a choice to make: turn his country even more towards a war economy, at the long-term suffering of his people under a fresh wave of sanctions, or come to the table.
As ever, Trump’s next move will be vital because if Putin still thinks he can win the war outright, he has no incentive to talk.
The UK has no idea if the White House will finally come down hard on the Russians, so fate is out of Starmer’s hands.
And back home, just ask Boris Johnson if doing the right thing on Ukraine is enough to save your bacon . . .
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KIM LEADBEATER’S Assisted Dying Bill looks just about ready for its own trip to Dignitas.
After a scrappy few months of spin and conjecture at the committee stage, the legislation faced a far more hostile reception from the full Commons last week.
Doctors, judges and psychologists have all given it the thumbs-down.
But PM Keir Starmer remains a supporter of allowing the terminally ill to legally end their life, and there is fresh talk of a lengthy Royal Commission studying the issue.
The long grass awaits.
