Ukraine: Why this is not Boris Johnson’s ‘Falklands’ moment despite PM silencing ‘partygate’ critics – Bernard Ingham

How Putin has lost the faith of Russia’s soldiers as Ukrainain war becomes the world’s worst nightmare – Colonel Bob Stewart

It is no exaggeration to say that his statesmanship confronting Putin’s merciless thuggery has led the field. Those who think he should enforce a no-fly zone over the UK either naively don’t believe Putin’s nuclear threats or cannot recognise one irresponsible man’s menace to world peace.

If Putin regards sanctions against Russia as a declaration of war, leading him to put his nuclear forces on the alert, then the West’s inevitably bloody attempt to command 
the Ukrainian skies would 
give him, in his paranoic state, every excuse to escalate the conflict.

Boris’s conduct is raising the domestic question as to whether the Ukraine is what is described as “his Thatcher moment”.

I have never really understood what the phrase means. The conspiracy theorists of the Left argue that she seized the opportunity of the Falklands invasion to distract attention from her many economic woes at home – woes inflicted by a good 20 years’ abuse of power by their union pals.

In fact, with inflation roaring away, sky high interest rates and rising unemployment, linked with internal Tory opposition to her rigorous economic policies, she needed the Falklands like she needed a hole in the head.

Similarly, Boris could have done without a bellicose Putin in the wake of the Covid pandemic that has left the UK and the West weakened by a burden of debt.

But, like Mrs Thatcher, he has risen to the occasion and already within two short weeks proven his leadership qualities. If that is what is meant by “the Thatcher moment”, he has certainly done so.

It has, however, secured him no more than a temporary release. Mrs Thatcher may have gone on to win the 1983 election by a landslide but the domestic problems remained. It took her four more years before she began to see economic daylight only to discover it was being sabotaged by those monetary integrationists – Chancellor Nigel Lawson and Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe – by shadowing the D-mark. Eventually, her enemies created the conditions for turfing her out of No 10.

Will history repeat itself with Boris? That depends on how he conducts himself from now on – and crucially on how he handles the Ukraine crisis while grappling with monumental economic problems at home.

And all the while he knows that one false move could turn Putin into a nuclear monster. The relative peace of the world lies partly in his hands as a new Cold War warms up.

I little imagined that, 40 years on when afar and asunder from the trials of the early Thatcher years as her press secretary, I would see a successor facing a far worse and more problematic future.

Some are inclined to think Boris is a lucky general. But it is a curious kind of “luck” to be saddled with a shooting war being waged by an irresponsible Russian leader while Communist China is a constant threat to Taiwan, the Pacific and its Himalayan neighbours.

All this “luck” is compounded by the need to repair our defences – let alone tackle a host of social problems – with a Covid-induced deficit of around £300bn. Oh yes – and resolve the EU’s Brexit nastiness while maintaining help for the gallant Ukrainians without promoting a nuclear conflagration that would threaten our civilisation.

And just to add to his load of trouble he has somehow to hold he United Kingdom together on the 70th anniversary of the Queen’s reign.

His achievements so far – winning the best Tory election majority since 1987 and ending Jeremy Corbyn’s threat to our freedom, getting Brexit more or less done, bringing Covid under control through an impressive vaccination programme and his handling of Putin – are full of promise.

But the heavy lifting has yet to come. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s pending economic statement will tell us whether an undoubtedly resilient and charismatic PM has also acquired financial responsibility and a sense of priorities. We shall see.

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