Boris has led the world as Ukraine’s friend in need
BRITAIN has played a blinder when it comes to Ukraine, providing the embattled nation with far more support in its heroic struggle against Russia than any other European country has done.
In Ukraine they know this full well, which explains why the most recent poll there has found Boris Johnson to be by far the most popular western leader, with his net rating on +49.6%, twice that of US President Joe Biden (+25.8%).
Mr Johnson, ably backed by Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, ensured that UK armed forces were training Ukraine’s military for months ahead of Russia’s invasion, especially in how to use the anti-tank NLAW system that Britain has supplied and that has been used to such devastating effect.
We closed off our airspace to Russia before any other European country did and spearheaded financial sanctions against the Russian regime too.
Through his dynamic approach, the Prime Minister has shamed other Nato leaders across Europe into belatedly stepping up their own support for Ukraine and into understanding that Vladimir Putin must fail and be seen to fail.
All this has led the Kremlin to brand Mr Johnson as Europe’s “most active anti-Russian leader”. In fact, the PM has even been ahead of the game when it comes to distinguishing his opposition to Russia’s despotic regime from his longstanding respect for Russia the country and its people.
WHATEVER shortcomings one may have identified in the Johnson premiership – and most of us have compiled quite a list – his handling of the Ukraine crisis is exemplary.
And yet, there is a segment of influential opinion which simply cannot bear the idea of Britain and Boris doing something important very well. I speak here of the anti-Brexit establishment and its many media cheerleaders.
In their desperation to portray the UK Government as offthe-pace and a marginal player in the crisis, they have constructed an alternative reality in which we are widely shunned.
This readiness to believe and amplify any criticism of their own country – even to the point of ridiculing it and its political leadership – reached a shameful crescendo this week at the Nato summit in Brussels.
For starters, much was made of Mr Johnson not attending the parallel European Union Summit held straight after the main event. Given that Britain is no longer an EU member, that absence was hardly a surprise. And given that Mr Johnson was in attendance at yet another gathering – of the G7 group of major economies – he could hardly be said to have been cut adrift. But worse by far was an entirely false claim that the Prime Minister was cold-shouldered by other leaders during a photo-call at the Nato event. “Boris Johnson looks remarkably isolated,” chirped the BBC’s North America Editor Sarah Smith over pictures of the PM standing momentarily on his own.
In fact, Mr Johnson had just shaken hands with President Macron of France, high-fived Mr Biden and chatted amiably with Italian premier Mario Draghi. Any broadcast journalist from any Nato country could have created a similar furore out of nothing by showing their own national leader standing in isolation and then splicing shots of other leaders glad-handing. But funnily-enough none did.
Only our own broadcasters choose to play this game, seeing everything through the prism of the Brexit vote and subsequent predictions that it would lead to
Britain losing clout in the world. That simply has not happened. On the contrary, it is the likes of Germany and Italy who face making the biggest adjustments to the new world order – by stepping up their emaciated defence spending and seeking to reduce their energy dependency on Russia. Britain, strange as it may sound to a population fed on media self-flagellation, has been ahead of the game.
EVERY EU country spent the first few weeks of this year refusing to believe that Putin would invade Ukraine and preferring the comforting notion that he was merely “sabre-rattling”. Only Britain and America had copper-bottomed intelligence pointing to the fact that he was set on invasion and of the two administrations, it was Johnson’s that led the way in warning the world.
Yes, the Prime Minister sometimes looks a shambles, with his messy hair and his hands-inpockets routine. But the only sensible response to his performance in this, the biggest foreign policy crisis of the modern era, is one of pride, whatever negative spin is put on things by his obsessive detractors.
‘A segment of opinion cannot bear Boris doing something very well’