Why it’s time for Europeans to try to directly negotiate a peace deal with Vladimir Putin - Andy Brown

In offering this support we need to be clear headed about the risks we are taking and prepared to counter them.

Britain is one of the key sources of the sophisticated drones that are being used with such effect by the Ukrainians to bomb Russian distribution centres, oil and gas facilities and military sites. That has direct and highly significant impacts on life, business and politics within Russia.

I happen to think that is the right thing to do but it is not a small thing with no consequences. We only have to imagine how we would react if Putin was supplying drones to an ally who was firing them at Amazon warehouses and petrol stations in Britain to visualise how big an issue this now is for the Russians.

Or rather we might not have to visualise that because the Russians have promised consequences for the UK. That might consist of cyber attacks. It might also consist of disrupting airports by flying drones across runways, cutting important cables and pipelines or even sending larger drones to attack British territory.

We would be wise to be ready for each of those risks and more. We would also be wise to develop a much better strategy for de-escalation of a conflict that is imposing huge misery on both ordinary Ukrainian and Russian people.

It is not enough to simply let the war drag on into a fifth deadly year and accept ever increasing risk. There are a lot of nuclear weapons available to Putin and he is increasingly desperate.

So far the assumption has been that we must leave leadership in negotiations to the US. Given the utter failure of Donald Trump to take an even handed approach to those negotiations it is time for Britain and European nations to tell him he does not have our support. Europeans need to try to directly negotiate a peace deal with Putin.

Thanks to the courage of the Ukrainian people and the support countries like ours have given them there are now a lot of cards to play. Let’s find out what capable British and European negotiators can achieve instead of relying on the faint hope that Trump will prove good at the art of the deal.

We also badly need to rethink our relationship with America in the second major conflict we are involved in. Most people in Britain will have heard our former Prime Minister Keir Starmer telling us that we were keeping out of the war between the US and Iran.

That isn’t what is happening. Most of the US bombers that have pounded Iran have taken off from British airfields. Most of the information and monitoring that the US has relied on for its targeting comes from information listening stations right here in Yorkshire. That is not neutrality in a conflict.

We weren’t consulted by Donald Trump in advance about his plans to attack Iran. We weren’t consulted meaningfully in any of his supposed peace deals that were meant to open the Straits of Hormuz. All we got was insults for daring to question a dreadful error of judgement that is costing British consumers dear and exposing us to increased risk of terrorist attacks.

No progress is going to be made on influencing Donald Trump to arrive at a reasonable long term solution to the cost of living pressures arising from his war until our country stands up for itself. It is time to tell the Americans that we are prepared to stop them using our land for their bombing raids and information gathering exercises if they aren’t prepared to respect our national interests and include us in decision making.

There is also a third conflict to be considered. Britain rightly stood firmly with the Israeli people after the murderous attacks from Hamas on October 7, 2023. What the Israeli government has done since has been to launch its own acts of terror on entire populations.

Gaza has been flattened. Syria and Lebanon invaded to grab land. Palestinians have been forced out of homes they’ve owned for generations by land thieves calling themselves settlers. Thousands have been killed and it is far from certain that these extreme actions have made the Israeli people genuinely safer. They did successfully distract attention from Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption cases.

It does Britain no credit if we are still sharing information and selling technology to a government using it for such naked aggression rather than legitimate defence.

Linking ourselves to US foreign policy may make sense if the US is defending democracy and freedom. It makes no sense at all when we are dealing with a US President who thinks Putin is a genius, Kim Jong Un is a good friend and the Gaza strip is a wonderful opportunity for property development.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley.