Bringing fruits to Trump’s volcano: Starmer edition

Monday Emmanuel Macron, Thursday Keir Starmer, and today Volodymyr Zelenskyy; one by one the village headmen have this week been placing offerings at the base of the White House volcano. As a Brit, I confess to feeling a little squeamish watching Sir Keir Starmer’s body language. He brought the shiniest gift of all — a personalised invitation to Donald Trump from King Charles. Earlier in the week Starmer also upped Britain’s defence spending target to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027. This does not amount to much but it will come at the expense of the UK’s overseas aid budget, which added an unexpected Trumpian twist. Starmer also laid on his praise for Trump having opened up the question of a Ukraine peace deal. None of this is irrational. If European leaders can flatter Trump into driving a tougher bargain with Russia, then it will be more than worth the self-abasing optics. Should Britain’s monarch somehow induce even brief transatlantic sentimentalism in Trump, then it could save a few Ukrainian lives. Charles would have earned his keep.

But I cannot help thinking that I have seen this movie many times before — and, no, I do not mean Love Actually (which I pretend to hate but secretly quite like actually). The recurring movie plot involves a British prime minister getting seduced into unwise subordination. Of its many iterations, Tony Blair’s backing for George W Bush’s 2003 Iraq war is the most infamous. Often overlooked is Harold Wilson’s refusal to participate in the Vietnam war. Wilson did Britain a service and earned the dislike of Lyndon Johnson.

What is Starmer planning? My great fear is that he will be dissuaded from joining the recent and seemingly decisive upswell in support for European defence “independence”. The term was used by Friedrich Merz, Germany’s incoming Christian Democrat chancellor. Everyone is a Gaullist now. Shortly before last Sunday’s German election, Merz also requested that Britain and France extend their nuclear umbrellas to Germany. It goes without saying that European defence integration minus Britain would be much less effective.

My fear is that Trump will slap 25 per cent tariffs on the EU and conspicuously not do the same to Britain. Starmer will then feel vindicated in his doubling down on the special relationship and be less enthusiastic about European autonomy. Of course, I don’t want Trump to start trade wars with anyone, Britain and the EU included. They are zero-sum games that leave all sides the loser. But if Britain is exempted Starmer will find it far harder to stand up to Trump on Ukraine.

Trump was on his best behaviour on Thursday. But when it comes to leverage, he acknowledges no such things as friends. The larger lesson of the opening weeks of Trump 2.0 is that Nato is in effect disabled and Russia has a fellow predator at the negotiating table. Europe and Ukraine are conspicuously absent. John Major, one of Starmer’s predecessors, co-signed the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for relinquishing its share of the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons (the other parties were Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk). Starmer is right to try the fruit delivery method first. But he must also be ready to play hardball when Trump reverts to type.

It is emotionally very hard for British leaders to stand up to their American counterparts. Britain is accorded a respect and status in Washington that comfortably exceeds its objective weight on the global stage. Receptions at the country’s sumptuous Lutyens-designed ambassadorial residence are the most sought after in town. The latest, on Wednesday night, was even more of a spectacle than normal — it doubled up as Peter Mandelson’s welcome party as the UK’s new ambassador and a reception for Starmer. It was hard to squeeze through the crush of cabinet secretaries, uniformed generals, newspaper editors and serving staff bearing trays of champagne and mini fish and chips (wrapped in pink paper, naturally). Who could fail to be swayed by all this Anglophilic attention?

Trump, too, played all the right notes on Thursday. “I’ll always be with the British,” he said when asked his response if Russia attacked UK troops in Ukraine. He also implicitly overrated Britain’s clout. “Could you take on Russia by yourselves?” he said to Starmer. The prime minister’s beneficent smile quickly gave way to nervous laughter. If there is a silver lining to Trump, it is that he is bringing the era of Europe’s deeply learned infantilisation to a close. It is clear that Germany has had that epiphany, as have many others across Europe. Has Starmer? We will find out.

I am turning this week to my excellent colleague, Jim Pickard, who is a leading reporter for the FT’s London parliamentary team. Jim, does Starmer have the guts and enough cross-party support to embrace a European defence community without America’s participation? Can the UK any longer feel confident in the Five Eyes intelligence relationship? 

Recommended reading

• My column this week look at the parlous state of democracy inside the US. “The more precarious Trump’s situation, the more boats he will burn,” I wrote. “Within a month he has decapitated each of the state’s repressive organs and put loyalists in their place.”

• Anyone who wants to learn about Silicon Valley’s lurch to the right should read Gil Duran’s Substack, “The Nerd Reich”. His latest essay on “The Sovereign Individual: Radical Bible of Tech’s Cognitive Elite” is particularly illuminating. We no longer have an excuse for not understanding the agenda, which is explicitly authoritarian.

Jim Pickard responds

It’s clear that Sir Keir will try to cling to the idea of American solidarity with Europe for as long as possible, despite the mounting evidence that Trump has little or no interest in the concept. 

In recent weeks he has been challenged constantly over Trump’s wavering support for European allies — including Ukraine — and has stuck to his theme that the US-UK alliance is imperative and must be, if anything, burnished. 

And he keeps insisting that Britain doesn’t have to pick between Europe and the US, painting this as a false choice. 

In part these repetitive lines reflect the fact that Starmer is not instinctively a brilliant communicator and feels visibly uncomfortable straying away from pre-written scripts and winging it, especially amid chaotic events. He doesn’t have the instinctive brilliance and verbal flexibility of an Emmanuel Macron or a Tony Blair. 

But equally the transatlantic partnership has been ingrained in the fabric of British politics for so long that the idea/possibility of it vaporising almost overnight still feels alien — almost unbelievable — to political leaders in London. And that includes Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the opposition. 

Does that mean Starmer hasn’t woken up to the fact that Trump is an unreliable and mercurial partner? Of course not. The prime minister is acutely aware of the urgent need to work more closely with European partners on defence in the coming months and years.  

Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has been in Cape Town this week discussing potential Europe-wide defence funding arrangements to help compensate from the now unreliable US security blanket. 

But talks remain at an early stage. Greater co-operation is possible, but could take time to establish. And hovering over all of this thinking is the chilling reality that Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent could be rendered inoperable without co-operation from Washington. 

As for the question of whether the UK can any longer feel confident in the Five Eyes intelligence relationship, I think the answer to that is pretty clear. 

Given the public statements of Trump, JD Vance, Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and various other Maga figure on foreign affairs (including their stances on Russia) British defence officials would have to have their heads in the sand not to be concerned.