Plans for the UK and other European countries to send troops to Ukraine are in their very early stages. But the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, will already be thinking about how such a move could play out at home. Sending UK troops abroad, even on a “peacekeeping” mission, always has the potential to spark huge public debate.
This is the first time the government has considered deploying military forces in 11 years, when the Cameron government debated intervening in Syria alongside the US Obama administration in 2014. Since then, the UK has not seriously considered deploying troops overseas.
In the intervening years, the Chilcot inquiry found that the UK’s decision to join the invasion of Iraq was made prematurely, before all peaceful options were exhausted.
