Douglas Murray

Worlds largest gun, see below
In Part Two it was our intention to look at some of the people involved in the response to the war in Ukraine. It was a short list: Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Boris Johnson. However, now Johnson has resigned things have changed and the new PM, Liz Truss, has been chosen by the Conservative party. She has an opportunity to alter the way the UK responds to the war, we don’t know whether this will happen but for the moment we will carry on with this post.

First we look at Macron, he has been criticised for making contact with Putin, this has been described as weak. In time the war may reach a point where formal peace negotiation can begin, then perhaps the position of Macron changes as he will have a leading role. We may assume this is what he wants; but is this right? Probably yes as he put the effort into getting to such a position. Macron would most likely share this role with Erdogan from Turkey, also Finland and Sweden. The latter two who renounced neutrality following the invasion of Ukraine would be consulted. It will be interesting to see the role of the UK here. Post invasion under Johnson the UK took a rather belligerent approach to Russia. This we will return to later.