Jonathan Powell: who is the man behind Keir Starmer's foreign policy?

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy meets Donald Trump today, Keir Starmer and the other European leaders who are in Washington to support the Ukrainian leader will be keen to "avoid a repeat" of the two men's "spiky" Oval Office encounter in February, said the BBC.

That clash came just a day after a "diplomatic triumph" for the UK, when Starmer met the US president for the first time, said The Telegraph. Since then, Britain has made a concerted effort to "teach the Ukrainian leader how to 'speak Trump'". And the key figure behind this strategy is Jonathan Powell, Starmer's national security adviser, "one of the most influential figures in British foreign policy".

What did the commentators say?

Powell was appointed to his post in November 2024, and "has been central to everything Labour has done on the global stage" since then, said Chris Smyth and Aubrey Allegretti in The Times. As well as helping to shape UK efforts to bolster Ukraine, he was also "at the heart of a delicate diplomatic balancing act that saw Britain shift towards recognising a Palestinian state".

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His decade of previous experience as Tony Blair's chief of staff and his role as chief negotiator in the Northern Ireland peace talks, in particular, have given him a deep feel for high-level diplomacy. "He is a world class operator," a government source told the paper. He has "made a career out of always being in the right room, but never at the centre of attention".

Powell's appointment was seen as "controversial". Traditionally, the role of national security adviser is filled by a civil servant; as a political appointee, Powell has been able to "evade the scrutiny put on his predecessors, with the Cabinet Office refusing to let him be grilled by Parliament's joint committee on national security".

First brought in to oversee the handover of the Chagos Islands, Powell is now "a near ubiquitous figure in UK diplomacy", said Lemma Shehadi in the UAE-owned The National. In the Middle East, his reputation "borders on the mythical". It's said that "he persuaded the PKK to dissolve" and that he "whispered the values of western governance" to Ahmad al-Shaara, now the president of Syria, when he was still an "obscure Islamist rebel". Powell "is like a foreign minister," a Turkish source told the paper. "In the Middle East, Powell plays a more important role than David Lammy."

Those who have worked closely with him say Powell can be "blunt and even abrasive, and sometimes talks like a machine gun", said The Economist. But he is also calm under pressure, "often persuasive", and, crucially, "prepared to sit through lengthy negotiations".

In Northern Ireland, Powell learned the importance of "shuttle diplomacy", keeping up constant personal contact with key figures on both sides of a situation. He has been travelling back and forth to Washington to keep in close touch with Trump's national security adviser, Michael Waltz, and to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. "If a ceasefire deal is eventually agreed over Vladimir Putin's initial objections, it will bear Mr Powell's fingerprints as much as anybody's," said the magazine.

What next?

Powell is also likely to play a key role in the next round of diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. He shared an eight-point peace plan, quietly drawn up by British diplomats, among European nations last month. "A day after Mr Powell began circulating the British plan, 22 Arab nations signed on to a declaration that mirrored its main goals at a United Nations conference", said The New York Times. That declaration "included for the first time a demand from the Arab League that Hamas disarm and give up power in Gaza".