Historian Dan Snow has warned Keir Starmer he has only been through the “easy part” of his leadership on Ukraine, and that the real work and difficulty is still to come.
Appearing on Laura Kuenssberg’s Sunday morning show, Snow praised the Labour leader for his approach so far on the conflict in Ukraine.
He said: “If you’re worried about the rules-based international order, then it turns out an internationalist lawyer in charge of the country is the right man for the job.”
Snow praised the PM for saying the “right things and being strong on Ukraine,” but warned that the difficult part is yet to come for him and the government.
“The key thing is what next,” he said. “What happens when the French go ‘okay, to be part of this new process, we’re going to need you to do some things,” suggesting that this could be building closer ties with the EU and that this would be “decision time.”
Snow continued: “This is the easy part. This is Churchill saying ‘we’ll fight them on the beaches.’ The next bit is how do you deter Vladimir Putin, and realistically where is the line? Is it the Baltics?”
Once again comparing the current scenario to the build-up to World War Two, Snow pointed out how Britain faced decisions about where the red line was for Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1939.
He continued: “Maybe the line this time is Ukraine, maybe the line is including all of 1994 Ukraine. But it may be that the line becomes Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, and at that stage he [Starmer] has to sell that to our European partners and then we have to mean it. That’s the real decision, that’s big time.”
This isn’t the first time comparisons have been drawn between war-time Britain and the current geopolitical climate. Last week, government minister Mike Kane shared a Labour campaign poster from 1945 which he said still rang true today, in 2025.
You can read more about that here.
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