In the wake of Donald Trump's heated Oval Office meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky last month, the European Union's foreign policy chief, Kallas Kaja declared: "The free world needs a new leader."
Could it be British Prime Minister Keir Starmer?
While French President Emmanuel Macron posted about Ukrainians "fighting for their dignity, their independence, their children and the security of Europe", Starmer picked up the phone to Trump and Zelenskyy and started working on plan to bring peace to Ukraine.
As Mr Trump's policies continue to divide both voters in the United States and the international community too, the British PM has seemingly been among the biggest beneficiaries.
Despite winning a landslide general election victory in July last year, Mr Starmer has never been particularly popular among voters.
Now, that's changing.
After an intense period of international diplomacy on Ukraine, the UK PM's favourability rating rose to a six-month high of 31 per cent with YouGov respondents in early March.
"He's a serious guy in very serious times," author of Keir Starmer: The Biography, Tom Baldwin, told the ABC.
"The performative politics you get from Boris Johnson and indeed you get from Trump is not his thing."
Starmer had been in the same Oval Office seat as President Zelenskyy some 48 hours before the now infamous clash but received a warm welcome.
The fact Starmer called Trump after he was shot on the campaign trail last year, and the UK government undertook a charm offensive in the lead-up to the US election, might have had something to do with that.
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who in opposition called Trump a "racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser", and others had spent months attempting to build bridges with Republicans.
The UK Labour Party, who would call Kamala Harris's Democrats their sister party, felt they had made progress and were delighted that Lammy was even offered a second helping of chicken at a meeting with Trump and his team — a sure sign, by all accounts, that the US president likes you.
Starmer had also appointed Lord Peter Mandelson, an architect of Tony Blair's huge victory in the 1990s and one of the party's most effective political operators, as the UK's ambassador to the US.
All of which, Starmer surely hoped, would leave his government in a strong position to, as he would later call it, act as a "bridge" between Europe and the US when Trump returned to power.
His team wanted to leave little to chance.
Trying to lock in a US security guarantee for Ukraine during his own visit to the White House, Starmer employed all the tools at his disposal, including hand-delivering an invite from King Charles for a second state visit in front of the world's media.
Starmer described the offer as "unprecedented" and "very special".
That pleased Trump but received backlash from some UK MPs, who saw it as unnecessary.
"He wouldn't mind at all that some people on the left [of politics] felt he was a little bit too obsequious to Trump — he doesn't care," Mr Baldwin said.
"He doesn't mind when people say he looked a little bit wooden or boring … what matters is outcomes".
No US security guarantee was locked in, nor a new US-UK trade deal signed, but the meeting landed well with a British public nervous about the disintegration of the UK's transatlantic alliance.
It signalled the so-called "special relationship" between the US and UK may not be in jeopardy at a time of global turmoil.
Starmer's international performance welcomed
Starmer himself said he wants to be a "bridge" between the US and Europe, but polling showed the public wasn't confident in his abilities to wrangle Donald Trump.
[STARMER POLL 1]A week after the meeting, the public had a rosier view on his performance on the issue of Ukraine.
[STARMER POLL 2]Days after the White House meltdown between Zelenskyy and Trump, Starmer hosted the Ukrainian president at Downing Street.
Starmer also convened a meeting with world leaders, to discuss the war and Europe's response to it, the first of a number as he and French president Emmanuel Macron try to spearhead a new approach which, in the worst-case scenario, may not include America.
Calling it a "coalition of the willing", the collective response could see troops from several European countries on the ground in Ukraine under a peace deal.
It is practical action Starmer excels at, Mr Baldwin said.
"He doesn't have the sort of three-word slogans and this big political vision, he comes across as a sort of grey figure, not dissimilar in some ways to [Prime Minister] Albanese, [who has] spent his life in politics … [Starmer is] a sort of ordinary person within politics," he said.
Starmer was the first in his family to go to university. His father was a toolmaker and his mother lived with a disability.
On finishing law school, he become a prominent human rights lawyer and then top prosecutor and head of the country's Crown Prosecution Service.
His allies would say he is rarely daunted by a huge challenge and was no stranger to David and Goliath-style battles during his days as a lawyer.
Known as the "McLibel" case, he represented two environmentalists against McDonald's in what was the longest trial of its kind in English legal history.
Mr Baldwin said that Starmer's background was a "combination of outsider-insider" and had shaped his approach to political life.
"His own seriousness and his disdain for performative politics and that kind of shallow day-to-day politics of what passes for political debate in this country has found its moment," Mr Baldwin reflected.
Voters critical of Starmer's performance at home
Starmer's Labour Party was elected on a mandate for change.
While his performance on the international stage has been largely well-received, Luke Tryl from think-tank More in Common (MiC) said domestically he has faced significant headwinds.
"Keir Starmer did not have the typical honeymoon that you expect of a new prime minister," Mr Tryl said.
After years of Conservative Party rule, scandals under Boris Johnson's leadership and Liz Truss's short but dramatic time in the top job helped Labour to an election victory.
The prolonged period of dysfunction also helped the far-right Reform UK party gain a foothold.
So far, polling would suggest the public hasn't been impressed by the new Labour government, or Starmer's performance.
Britain's economy has struggled post-Brexit, meaning anaemic growth and the public seeing little improvement in their standard of living for several years.
Voters were blindsided by a controversial decision by the Starmer government to means-test a benefit for pensioners to help with winter fuel costs.
Mr Tryl said it has felt as though the public's desire for a period of renewal sometimes came up against Starmer's "stolid" leadership style.
As with his response to the war in Ukraine, the riots sparked by the killings of three children in Southport provided him with a domestic opportunity to respond to a crisis.
But MiC polling found that at one point, Nigel Farage, the leader of far-right party Reform UK, was preferred prime minister to Starmer.
"Trump's handling of Ukraine … has provided Keir Starmer with an opportunity to reintroduce himself to the public, to reset his premiership," Mr Tryl said.
After the Oval Office meeting and international work on Ukraine, he leads Farage again by six points on MiC's polling.
His approval rating has also improved by 12 points, but remains at minus 27 on MiC's numbers.
"It does seem to be directly related to his handling of Ukraine," Mr Tryl said.
"That kind of stolid, reassuring leadership is giving people what they need. People are feeling quite discombobulated by Trump, about Ukraine and global affairs, and they quite like the idea of having, to use that very cliched phrase, a grown up in charge.
"Thirty-seven per cent of the public say that the conflict has made them feel more positively towards Keir Starmer, including 28 per cent of those who didn't vote for Labour, and in particular, he gets plaudits for his attempts to act as a bridge between the US and Europe — 48 per cent think that's a good idea, just 16 per cent think that it's a bad idea," he said.
Despite his change in fortunes, Mr Tryl wasn't sure Ukraine would be the defining issue of his prime ministership.
"Whilst Ukraine might give him another hearing with voters, his future is going to be decided by, come 2028, can people get GP appointments more easily, has he made progress on tackling Channel crossings, and is the cost of the weekly shop feeling more affordable for people?"
Tom Baldwin wasn't so sure they would be the issues that would continue to dominate politics in the UK or Australia.
"I wonder whether the X-factor in your coming election is going to be Donald Trump as well," he said.
"He doesn't care if China dominates your region of the world and whether Russia dominates Eastern Europe.
"That's going to have profound consequences. I wonder whether all politics, including Australian politics, are going to be less about living standards and getting GP appointments and actually going to be about how do we stay safe in a really dangerous world in the next few years?"
Ukraine an opportunity for UK-Europe reset
Kim Darroch is a former UK ambassador to the US, and fell foul of Mr Trump's unpredictable nature when his private communications criticising the president were leaked.
He is a member of the House of Lords and a board member at Best for Britain, which campaigns for closer ties between Britain and Europe.
"The irony here is that Donald Trump has done far more to push UK closer to Europe than any number of campaign groups, because of what appears to be the emerging US policy on Ukraine and because of his apparent intention to basically draw America back from Europe," Mr Darroch said.
He said the most urgent issue for the Starmer government was the economy.
Starmer is under increasing pressure to choose between striking a US-UK trade deal and rebuilding Britain's trading relationship with the EU, though Downing Street has rejected the idea the two ambitions are at odds.
"The government set itself in its campaign promises before the election against rejoining the single market, against rejoining the EU customs union. I think that's a pity," he said.
"We need to move much more quickly to establish much stronger, looser economic and commercial relations with Europe.
"I think we should be much more ambitious than the rather modest proposals that the government has so far, which are a security pact with Europe and Phytosanitary agreement, and possibly something on youth movement — that seems to be a rather thin agenda for such an important challenge."
He said the "coalition of the willing" on Ukraine, and aligning views on the need for countries to increase defence spending across the continent, provided a moment to reset UK and European relations post-Brexit.
"Given the UK is one of the two major military powers in Europe alongside France, means that we are going to be thrust together. Really, it's an inevitability, but it's also, I think, desirable," he said.
Starmer is due to meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in May to review the Trade and Cooperation agreement struck after Brexit.
