Donald Trump certainly doesn’t sound like he shares Keir Starmer’s vision for a future American role in Ukraine. “I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” he said yesterday. “We’re going to have Europe do that.”
Starmer is nonetheless hoping that a commitment might be extracted. He has been attempting a tightrope act in the last two weeks: on the one hand, asserting that Volodymyr Zelenskyy was democratically elected after Trump called him a dictator, and leading European promises to put boots on the ground in Ukraine. On the other hand, declining to veto a UN security council resolution supported by the US that featured no criticism of Moscow’s conduct.
“I do think Starmer has shown a bit more leadership recently,” Patrick Wintour said. “There has been no ambiguity about what the UK has said about supporting Ukraine – but they don’t see any purpose in criticising Trump directly. There are others in Europe who think that the ways have already parted.” Yesterday, the new UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson – pictured above with Starmer last night – told the New York Times: “It’s not Starmer’s style to have exchanges on words or semantics. He just wants to get stuff done.”
Here’s how that approach might play out at the White House today.
What does Starmer want to talk about?
There are lots of major issues that the UK would like to make progress on: Trump’s tariffs, his approach to the Middle East, and the Chagos Islands, to name just a few. (Peter Walker has a full rundown of Starmer’s priorities.)
The UK certainly hopes to exert influence over Gaza’s future, with a “non-paper”, or informal memo, recently distributed to ambassadors in the Middle East setting out clear opposition to Trump’s insistence that he can simply displace the territory’s residents and take control of it. “That is much closer to the proposals set out by the Egyptians than anything the Americans have supported,” Patrick said. “So that is important to the UK.”
In the end, though, there may be a feeling that in a personal meeting with Trump there is only likely to be the bandwidth for a focus on one thing – and that is bound to be Ukraine.
“There will be a bit of distribution of some of those other issues at official level,” Patrick said. “And [foreign secretary] David Lammy is in DC at the same time – they do want some progress on whether the US is going to accept the Chagos Islands deal, too. But for Starmer, Ukraine is of course the big subject, and specifically the question of whether the US will provide assurances of a backstop for any peacekeeping force involving the UK.”
What does Trump want?
In public, Trump tends to suggest that his meetings with foreign leaders are trivial favours he is happy to offer if they are so desperate to see him. “I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump said about Zelenskyy. “Certainly, it’s OK with me if he’d like to.” And of Starmer, he said: “He asked to come and see me and I just accepted his asking.”
Maintaining this posture of psychological supremacy may be his personal priority for the meeting, if he has one at all – and so the UK’s announcement on military spending, long a Trump bugbear with Europe, feels very obviously timed.
The hope may be that it will be interpreted by Trump as evidence of his favourite thing: someone doing something because he has told them to. “It’s a gift with a bow on it,” Patrick said. “They’re consistently trying to show Trump that they are listening to him. But it’s also, more quietly, accelerated by the growing acceptance that the US is just not a reliable ally. So it’s about equity of commitment, but it’s also about independence.”
It is also quite likely that he views the meeting with Starmer as a sideshow, even if it does get him an invitation to visit King Charles. His meeting with Zelenskyy tomorrow may give a clearer sense of whether there is any kind of prospect of him coming round on a support role for the US in guaranteeing a peace deal. But the rare earth minerals deal they are expected to sign is reported to only contain the vaguest references to Ukraine’s future security.
What lessons will Starmer take from Macron’s visit?
In this excellent analysis piece from Tuesday, Patrick reports that the UK and France have been working more closely on Ukraine than on any issue since Brexit, and that “the aim was … to use their visits this week to operate as a pincer movement” – to persuade Trump that Vladimir Putin cannot be trusted, and that America’s future still lies in partnership with Europe. “The message is that if you give everything away to Putin, you will be seen as weak – particularly by China,” Patrick said.
Macron and Starmer have already spoken directly, he noted. “One of the things discussed will have been the fact that Trump said to Macron that he had got Putin’s agreement to European troops being allowed into Ukraine on a reassurance basis, only for the Kremlin to then contradict that publicly. So the one thing he thought he’d come away with has disappeared.”
Macron did try to assert himself by pointing out the extent of Europe’s contribution to Ukraine, which Trump has repeatedly falsely downplayed – not a Love Actually moment, quite, but enough in a period of European weakness to engender a bit of continental pride. “He really had no choice,” Patrick said. “If Europe is to have standing in these talks, he had to make it clear that they are as financially committed as anyone.”
After Macron’s fairly chaotic encounter, the Downing Street team will try their best to stick to a rigid structure today. “They won’t want it to drift in the same way,” Patrick said. “Normally the photo opportunity at the beginning of the meeting is two minutes – this one went on and on because Trump took endless questions, and that eats into the bilateral, and then there’s a press conference anyway. So the UK side will be looking to keep things moving.”
That is partly because the longer Trump talks, the more likely it is he will say something controversial that Starmer has to respond to on the fly – which probably doesn’t come to him as naturally as it does to Macron.
Is the idea of being Trump’s ‘bridge’ to Europe viable?
This has become something of a mantra in the past few weeks: the idea that there is no need to choose sides, and that instead the UK can continue to act in the role it has always claimed for itself, as a plausible broker for the Europeans and Anglo-Saxons alike. “I believe we in the UK can play a part, as that bridge between the US and Europe as we adjust to this new era – and it certainly is a new era,” business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said last week. “But I think it would be wrong to portray this as some sort of fundamental breach.”
In practice, this “bridge” status has so far meant two things: avoiding direct confrontation with Trump, and financial commitment.
“I think ‘bridge’ is a self-designated status, really,” Patrick said. “The UK and France are still certainly advocates of engagement. But there are others in Europe saying that it’s time to come to terms with reality – that he is out to divide and weaken Europe.”
Today will provide a clear point of evidence for who is right. “Starmer still thinks that there’s a way to draw him back to the European alliance,” Patrick said. “He’s not going to shift away from that approach for now.”
