Into the breach

As the Trump administration retreats from Europe, Germany, France and the UK throw off old rules and pledge to do 'whatever it takes' to stand up to Russia

- By Toby Helm, Jennifer Rankin BRUSSELS, Luke Harding KYIV and Kate Connolly BERLIN

WHEN HE rose to his feet at prime minister's questions last Wednesday, Keir Starmer delivered a stirring tribute to six British soldiers who lost their lives in Afghanistan 13 years ago.

He read out their names very deliberately, one by one. The House was silent. The prime minister then added a tribute to a 22-year-old British Royal Marine, also killed on 6 March, but in 2007 in Helmand province.

They were poignant moments, on what is normally a raucous and crudely partisan occasion in the political week.

Across the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Starmer told MPs, 642 individuals had died. Many more had been wounded. "We will never forget their bravery and their sacrifice," he said.

But the prime minister's tributes were not just for the families of the lost soldiers. Nor were they just for British ears. They were also intended to be heard loud and clear in the US, inside Donald Trump's administration, most notably by vice-president JD Vance, who the day before had appeared to disrespect British troops by saying that a US stake in Ukraine's economy was a "better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn't fought a war in 30 or 40 years".

Less than a week after Starmer's tactile "love in" with Donald Trump in the White House, views on how to react to the new US administration had evolved, in Britain and across Europe.

Trump and Vance's wild, erratic and at times insulting comments about European governments had left politicians on this side of the Atlantic facing two dawning realities: first, that they had, somehow, to find ways to push back against Trump and Vance without stoking tensions to even more dangerous levels. And second that for the long-term they had to formulate a real plan for a world in which the US would no longer be the cornerstone of western security.