Let’s be clear: Starmer loans Ukraine £1.6bn in missiles – to help Trump get much more?

The European leaders’ plan was for the United States to provide air cover for Ukraine after a peace deal is signed with Russia. But now the air cover is likely to be provided by the UK, it seems. And Keir Starmer has already promised to provide troops for a “peacekeeping force”.

The United States is needed to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, apparently. But if that’s all Trump is doing, then why should the United States get hundreds of billions of pounds worth of mineral wealth from Ukraine?

All Trump has to offer now – it seems to This Writer – are words. He doesn’t even have to support them with anything – just make a few vague promises and load up on rare stones.

Does that seem fair to you?

Starmer is probably correct in believing that Trump can be trusted – a little. He wants those minerals and he doesn’t want Vladimir Putin to have them, so he’ll do what he must.

But my guess is he’ll only do what he believes is absolutely necessary to get what he wants. If he gets his peace, and his mineral deal, and the deal is honoured fully, see how fast he waddles away from Ukraine and any responsibility for what happens there.

It’s nice that the deal will also create 200 jobs in Northern Ireland and directly support a further 700 jobs in the UK, according to the Ministry of Defence (MOD), through the manufacture of more than 5,000 lightweight-multirole missiles (LMM), which will triple production at Thales factory in Belfast.

But from what I’m seeing, the UK government is paying for it all, in the belief that Ukraine will pay us back sometime. So Volodymyr Zelenskyy is getting it on the never-never.

Should we be glad that Starmer is using UK export finance, a government mechanism that provides loans, guarantees, and insurance to support UK exports, rather than strip-mining (sorry; bad choice of metaphor) another government department’s budget?

Given the state of the rest of it, that is scant comfort.