On Thursday, he travels to Washington, DC, for a high-stakes meeting with Donald Trump.
He will have around three hours to persuade the President not to abandon Ukraine.
He will, according to reports, attempt to persuade the half-Scottish Commander-in-Chief to push for a peace deal which will see European countries shoulder many of the burdens of peacekeeping, but which would be underwritten by a US “tripwire” to try to deter Vladimir Putin from invading the Baltic states or other parts of Eastern Europe.
If he fails? Well, in an article for the Times, Defence Secretary John Healy warned about the very real prospect of Europe at war again.
“The decisions made over the coming weeks will not only define the outcome of this conflict but the shape of global security for a generation,” he wrote.
Basically, the world is on the brink, Trump is tearing up the rulebook, and yet Sir Keir still had to traipse up to Glasgow’s SEC on a wet Sunday morning to address a less-than-full hall for the Scottish Labour Conference.
It’s some gig being Prime Minister.
His speech was stark. He spoke of entering a “new phase” in the conflict and of a “generational moment.”
“We have to be ready to play our role if a force is required in Ukraine once a peace agreement is reached,” he told delegates—who, just ten minutes earlier, had been laughing at jokes about Anas Sarwar’s DJing skills.
If, somehow, we’re all still here in 2026, and not on the front line in Finland, there’s the Holyrood election to look forward to.
At present, Labour is heading for a dire result. Their best hope is the SNP’s implosion—something that, given recent and possible future events, isn’t implausible.
But there’s no denying that Sir Keir and the decisions taken by his ministers have made life hard for Sarwar.
Delegates, MSPs, and MPs, arrived at the conference feeling battered and bruised.
But they left upbeat and geed up, boosted by policy announcements from Sarwar and Starmer. The pledge of £200m for Grangemouth was a real shot in the arm. Will it make a difference?
That might depend on the decisions to come.
Last week, Professor Sir John Curtice said the polling suggested Sir Keir was “Scotland’s least-liked politician.”
The PM dismissed the polling guru. “I don’t get up and start rummaging around opinion polls or look at what punters are saying,” he said.
He probably meant pundit rather than punter, but you get the drift.
I believe him. Frankly, Scotland’s least popular politician has bigger problems than polling numbers.
