Labour’s handbrake turn on defence makes them more hardline than the Tories

Keir Starmer’s shadow foreign secretary voted against Trident, but now wants us believe that he is more pro-nuclear and pro-Nato than Rishi Sunak, writes John Rentoul

David Lammy and John Healey are not yet household names, but they looked the part in Kyiv as shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary (Reuters)

They got the photos they came for. David Lammy and John Healey are not yet household names, but they looked the part as shadow foreign secretary and shadow defence secretary, shaking hands in Kyiv with Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister, who was in military clothes.

Their message was simple: “A change in government in the UK would mean no change in our military, diplomatic, financial and political support to Ukraine.”

It is all part of Project Reassurance, convincing British voters that they will be safe with a Labour government. The Kyiv trip was a direct reply to Rishi Sunak, delivering a speech in London at about the same time on Monday, after which the prime minister explicitly claimed that Britain would be “less safe” under Keir Starmer.