When all eyes at Westminster are fixed on Washington, it is easy to forget how little attention is paid back in return.
Unlike Mexico and Canada, Britain doesn’t have a long border with the US. It doesn’t rival America’s superpower primacy on the planet, unlike China. And it doesn’t export more goods across the Atlantic than it imports – a trait Donald Trump despises about the European Union.
No US president is indifferent to the country that insists on calling the relationship “special”. The historic bonds are thick, and that will inform decisions Trump makes when little Britain blips on his radar.
In the meantime, all the speculation and briefing about which UK politician enjoys what degree of intimacy with the new administration should be read as an expression of impotence by all involved.
Nigel Farage is always advertising his services as a Trump-whisperer to anyone who will listen. Various former Conservative ministers flapped on the periphery of the inauguration. There is no evidence that the flame cares about the moths.
There is ideological affinity between Britain’s radical right and the Maga movement, with some mingling of minions between the two camps. Potentates make room for sycophants. But real insiders know that bragging about influence jeopardises their access.
Power talks to power. If Trump wants something from Britain – if there is a deal to be done – the person on the other end of the line will be the prime minister, not the MP for Clacton. The rest is noise, unhelpful and dangerous when it interferes with diplomatic signals, but not the substance of the relationship. Not yet.
The more substantial threat comes from Elon Musk, who really is an influential figure in US affairs (not to mention the richest person alive). The billionaire X founder has decided that Keir Starmer’s democratically elected government is, in fact, a repressive woke junta that needs to be removed for freedom to flourish. Whether or not Trump believes that, he could adopt it as a stance to bully the prime minister when that suits his agenda.
The far right will play along, posing as dissidents looking to Uncle Sam for regime change. This mercenary service to an unfriendly foreign power will elicit no denunciation from supposedly patriotic Conservatives.
The challenge for Starmer is to establish a functional dialogue with the White House before he can be drowned out by malevolent Musketry. And he will have to do it while also fulfilling his pledge to strengthen relations with the EU.
The prime minister denies the tension there. He says there is no contradiction between his ambition to sustain the specialness of Britain’s transatlantic partnership and his policy of a European “reset”. He “utterly rejects” the suggestion that it is a binary choice, arguing that the national interest demands cultivation of both alliances.
He is right, up to a point. The tricky part is knowing when that point has been reached. The right will goad Starmer to show ever more craven fealty to Trump, justifying or celebrating each new spasm of tyranny. The prime minister will also come under pressure from his own party to prove that he has a conscience and finds the whole spectacle repugnant.
But Britain can’t afford a sudden rupture from US power and foreign liberals can’t shame America’s government into being something it isn’t. Realpolitik doesn’t have to be abject, but it is necessarily discreet. Even if the prime minister is privately appalled by Trump, he has to ration rebuke and word it carefully.
It isn’t just the domestic audience that will need to hear some dignified disavowal of Trumpism. European leaders will want to know that Starmer seeks rapprochement in a spirit of solidarity. He has to bring a concept of future partnership to the table, not just a shopping list of amendments to the existing Brexit settlement.
The two sides’ interests are aligned in the first stage. Starmer wants a security pact; Trump’s contempt for Nato and his indulgence of Vladimir Putin make the EU eager to hook up with Britain’s military and intelligence capabilities. But then it gets messy. The further a defence pact goes, the harder it rubs against questions of institutional integration – what bodies could the UK join? – and arms procurement – who will buy what from whom?
Downing Street has a scheme for the EU reset: defence cooperation generates the goodwill that then facilitates a friendly conversation about easing border friction in trade. That sequence doesn’t hold if Brussels is facing a barrage of US tariffs before the negotiations have even started, while Starmer is lobbying the White House for exemptions.
Trump’s hostility to the EU is personal and ideological. He hates it as a manifestation of the idea that mutual economic dependency between states, underpinned by international laws and treaties, can be a source of collective strength and rising prosperity. He is offended by the economic heft of the single market. He sees its regulatory reach as an affront to American supremacy and the whole European social model as a decadent racket, achieved by free-riding on Pentagon security guarantees. He wants to divide and conquer, neutralising and disarming Brussels as a soft power player.
Embattled European leaders will want signs that Britain is a full-time ally, not a part-time agent of their American tormentor. Meanwhile, Reform and the Tories will bellow that Labour is selling the country into Brussels bondage and squandering the chance to complete the Brexit revolution with a US trade deal on whatever terms Trump dictates.
To navigate this labyrinth, Starmer needs clear priorities informed by a coherent strategic purpose. When so much is uncertain, there is a pragmatic case for keeping all channels open, refusing to pick sides. But hard choices are coming and they won’t wait for the prime minister to indulge his usual ponderous method.
Geopolitical orientation isn’t something that can be put out for consultation or made subject to a review, reporting in 2028. We are in the Trump vortex now, a frenzy of bewildering events and conflicting demands. It could paralyse a leader who likes to collate the data and mull the options before making a decision. The uncertainty won’t stop. It is a design feature of a Trump presidency. The risk, then, is that pragmatism mutates into passivity. A prime minister who takes too long to choose could end up outsourcing the choice to people who don’t have Britain’s interests at heart.