Jonathan Powell played a crucial role in securing peace in Northern Ireland — and his much-hyped skills as a negotiator are being put to the test again.
LONDON — Keir Starmer has enjoyed mixed fortunes since becoming prime minister. But on matters of war and peace he may have just picked a winner.
When Starmer chose Jonathan Powell as the latest U.K. national security adviser — effectively the PM’s top lieutenant on foreign policy — his credentials were obvious.
As Tony Blair’s chief of staff from 1997 to 2007, Powell played a key role for the then-prime minister in hammering out the Good Friday Agreement, which helped establish peace after decades of violence in Northern Ireland.
Powell’s skills as a negotiator have already been put to the test for Starmer.
In the past week, he has helped draw up a ceasefire proposal put forward by the U.S. and Ukraine — the existence of which is a remarkable turnaround after the disastrous Oval Office meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Alongside Starmer, Powell has worked hard to ensure that lines of communication were kept open in the wake of that public meltdown. Just last weekend, and on the eve of Saudi-hosted talks between the U.S. and Ukraine, Powell traveled to Kyiv to draft the agreement with Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
He returns to Washington, D.C. on Friday with European colleagues to meet Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, in a bid to sustain momentum.
It is still much too soon for real optimism among Ukraine’s allies, with Russian President Vladimir Putin slapping heavy conditions on any Russian acceptance of the deal Thursday evening.
But for now, Starmer and his top foreign policy brain have placed themselves firmly at the heart of a push for a peace that aims to leave Ukraine — and Europe — feeling less abandoned.
Thinking the unthinkable
Those who know Powell say the crucial role he has played in the past few days strongly echoes his approach to the seemingly intractable decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland.
Unlike Blair, when Powell first met the late Irish Republican leader Martin McGuinness, he refused to shake his hand.
Powell’s own father, Air Vice-Marshal John Frederick Powell, was once hit by an Irish Republican Army bullet in an ambush — and his brother was a target for the IRA when he worked as an adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Yet Powell became convinced through his experience of dealing with McGuinness and others that it was necessary to speak to people deemed terrorists — and the sooner the better, in order to do everything possible to avert loss of life.
Richard English, director of the Mitchell Institute at Queen’s University Belfast, where Powell is an honorary professor, said his “preparedness to build relationships with the government’s former enemies was vital.”
He added: “His experience has led him to argue that dialogue and engagement are often left too late.”
After leaving government, Powell founded his own NGO specializing in conflict mediation.
He was later tapped by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to act as the U.K.’s envoy to Libya following the 1969 to 2011 reign of Muammar Gaddafi, a bruising experience, where getting peace negotiations off the ground proved far harder in the absence of a stable government and with dwindling international attention.
“It hasn’t got a lot better since I started so I’m glad I’m not being paid by results,” he bluntly told the Guardian in 2015. “The only thing I know from working round the world is that it always takes longer than you think.”
Powell has written about the importance of physically traveling to meet interlocutors on their turf as a way of building trust — an approach visible in his own recent travels but also in the U.K.’s wider bid to maintain a steady drumbeat of high-level visits to the U.S.
Shortly after Starmer’s trip to the White House, Defense Secretary John Healey went to meet his American counterpart Pete Hegseth. Powell followed Friday, and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is expected in the U.S. next week.
Peter Ricketts, who served as Cameron’s national security adviser, described Powell as “that critical international link” between the U.S. and the U.K., who as NSA has a White House phone on his desk “for secure communications with the U.S. national security adviser at any hour of the day or night.”
The details of the plan that Powell thrashed out with Yermak again bore some hallmarks of his most famous success — including “confidence-building” measures, an approach that underpinned talks in the Northern Ireland peace process.
He has also tried to persuade the U.S. that it cannot trust Russia — and that it is in Trump’s interests, not just Ukraine’s, to prevent Putin from gaining the upper hand, one person close to the talks said.
Softly, softly
Britain’s international reputation has taken some knocks in the years that followed its exit from the EU. But Powell — a son of the establishment who spent his formative years at the Foreign Office — has been given an opportunity to show that the country can still handle finely-tuned diplomacy.
Powell told POLITICO’s Power Play podcast after Starmer was elected last year that the new PM would seek to convey the message that “Britain is back.”
Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s powerful chief of staff, was instrumental in Powell’s return to Downing Street. McSweeney had sought advice from others who had performed the No. 10 chief of staff role before — and was so impressed by Powell that he decided he could be a vital source of wisdom for the government, especially on foreign affairs.
Not long after, Starmer appointed Powell as his national security adviser. McSweeney himself doesn’t have much foreign policy experience, leaving yet more room for Powell to expand his authority in No. 10.
“He’s playing a crucial role at the center, but a very low-profile one,” Ricketts noted of the man often seen lurking in the background in photographs of the British PM. “It’s not something a foreign secretary could do, for example, because it’s providing under-the-radar, intensive and close support to the Ukrainians.”
English described Powell as a man with “extraordinary patience” and a “calm preparedness.” Emily Thornberry, Labour MP and chair of the Commons foreign affairs committee, likewise told the BBC “he brings a depth of understanding and a calm” to the role.
Even critics of Starmer’s overall approach are coming around to the security chief.
A senior government adviser, granted anonymity like others in this piece because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the decision to appoint Powell was a clear win, even though they had been critical of Starmer’s judgment in some areas.
They described the national security adviser as “a proper grown up” and “a heavy hitter — he’s bigger than any of us in almost all of our specialisms.”
Seeking Superman
Placing so much faith in one person, however, comes with its own risks, and not everyone finds Powell quite so charming. One former colleague who traveled with Powell said he could be “blunt” and “awkward in an English kind of way.”
At times Powell can appear to have one foot in the past, the same person said. He has even been known to accidentally refer to the current prime minister as “Tony” — proving that old habits die hard.
There is also the accusation that Starmer is relying too heavily on a single adviser for diplomatic firepower — with little in the way of back-up.
Powell is effectively doing what was previously two different jobs, working as the PM’s national security adviser and the No. 10 foreign policy adviser at the same time.
One person with knowledge of the arrangement said: “It’s impossible for Jonathan Powell to do both of those jobs. You would have to be Superman to do both of those jobs at the same time.”
And while Powell enjoys significant power at the heart of government, he is not exposed to scrutiny in the same way as Starmer or any of his ministers. POLITICO reported last week that the government will not allow Powell to give evidence to parliament’s Joint National Security Strategy Committee.
Committee chairman Matt Western complained that parliament’s ability to ask questions of the government’s strategy is being “stifled” as a result.
Powell may be relieved not to be hauled in front of a committee at this delicate juncture.
But the ultimate test of his endeavors remains: Will Russia move? And will the apparent rapprochement between Trump and Ukraine hold?
The early signs have been mixed. It will now be a nervous wait for Powell as U.S. and Russian representatives meet to discuss a plan in which the U.K.’s national security adviser has himself been so instrumental.
Dan Bloom and Tim Ross contributed reporting.
