The Guardian view on Britain and Ukraine: play our part
Boris Johnson was quickly out of the blocks when the news arrived from Ukraine before dawn. By 5am, a tweet was out in his name condemning Russia’s military invasion and promising a decisive response. He spent the morning getting briefed and on the phone to other leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv. At midday he broadcast to the nation, and in the early afternoon he took part in a virtual G7 meeting to coordinate sanctions against Russia with the US, the EU, Japan and Canada. By 5pm, he was spelling out the UK’s new plans in the House of Commons.
Mr Johnson is a prime minister on probation with his own party. His initial announcement of sanctions against a handful of Russian banks and oligarchs had been scorned, including by Tories, as underwhelming.
So Thursday night’s new package went further, as it should have done even without Russia’s assault. Although the G7 failed to agree to exclude Russia from the Swift international banking system, the package they agreed is substantial. Mr Johnson announced new curbs covering banks, exports, the freezing of assets and a ban on the Russian airline Aeroflot. Whether this will “hobble the Russian economy”, as Mr Johnson promised in his broadcast, remains to be seen. But the exercise shows the incomparable value of working together with allies.
These were the easier bits. Warm words are Mr Johnson’s comfort zone. But the invasion of Ukraine is not a verbal joust. It is a violent and dangerous fact. It will not be reversed by sonorous phrases. To do that requires serious planning, deliverable agreements, effective deeds, the building of trust with allies, and sustaining the effort over a long period, if necessary at some financial and human cost. This is the bit where Mr Johnson always falls down.
Nevertheless, these leadership qualities are essential in the dangerous new world that Russia created this week. This is, as Keir Starmer said, a turning point. Mr Johnson talked some of the talk in his broadcast, with references to “our European continent”, about Ukrainian “neighbours and co-workers”, and about responding “in concert with our allies”. He was quite right. But is he capable of turning words into consistent realities?
To do so will demand a major change in approach from the government and the prime minister. In particular, it will mean working hard, consistently and reliably with the EU and allied European governments on big issues like defence, intelligence, energy, sanctions and the treatment of refugees. It will require an end to smug claims to be world-leading, to threats to break treaty commitments, and to public digs at neighbours and allies. It is a tall order. Dangerous times demand it all the same. There were hints of a new approach on Thursday. But Mr Johnson remains very much on probation.