I anticipated that UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham would change the policy of his predecessor, Keir Starmer, and stop supporting the NATO-provoked war in Ukraine.
There’s a clear economic reason: since 2022, the UK has spent at least £35 billion on Ukraine, far more than the cost of The Triple Lock – now under threat – which protects pensioners’ incomes.
Equally important is the historic fact that in 2014 a democratically elected President of Ukraine was deposed in a coup d’état (backed by Western powers). Since then Ukraine’s successive governments have been controlled by heirs of the same forces that fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviet Union in the Second World War.
NATO wanted the civil war that began in 2014. That civil war, started by the Kyiv regime against Ukraine’s eastern provinces provoked the Russian response that began in 2022.
The Ukraine/Russia war has nothing to do with the safety or welfare of the UK or any other NATO member nation, yet our country together with the European Union and NATO is doing everything to keep it going.
I admit I was encouraged by some of Andy Burnham’s campaign pledges earlier this year, but continuing our country’s involvement in this dreadful conflict renders those pledges useless. I don’t know if he does consider himself a Socialist. If he did, he would give a lead to other Western nations: stop providing funds and equipment for further slaughter, insist on peace negotiations now, and pull the UK out of this ultimately futile support for NATO’s war in Ukraine.
Arthur Scargill
President
National Union of Mineworkers
1982 to 2002 11 October 2026