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It’s one damn thing after another. As Keir Starmer is discovering, government, like life, can feel like a fusillade of events, each coming faster than the one before. If it’s not a cabinet minister resigning over a past fraud conviction, it’s MPs voting for assisted dying – and that’s just in one day. Through that blizzard of news, it can be hard to make out the lasting changes in the landscape – even those that have profound implications for our place in the world.
The November 2024 event that will have the most enduring global impact is the election of Donald Trump. There are some in the higher reaches of the UK government who are surprisingly relaxed about that fact, reassuring themselves that, in effect, we got through it once, we’ll get through it again. Yes, they admit, Trump has nominated some crazy people to lead in areas crucial to the UK-US relationship, such as defence and intelligence, but don’t worry, officials in London will do what they did last time: work with like-minded counterparts in the Washington bureaucracy to bypass the Trump loyalists at the top.
Whether that’s complacency or naivety, it’s a mistake. This is not like last time. As Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, put it to me: “Trump is different and the world is different.” During his first term, Trump was hemmed in by the establishment types he had appointed to key jobs. Now he will be unbound. Back then, there was no war in Europe, China was in cooperation mode and Britain was still in the EU. That’s all changed now.
Consider what Trumpism, if implemented, means for the world. It would dismantle the post-1945 order, underpinned for eight decades by the US. In that period, the US acted as both guarantor for a system of global trade and defensive umbrella for the western alliance, with Britain and Europe the obvious beneficiaries. Playing that role came at a cost for the US, but successive presidents believed it was worth it, because a stable world was one in which the US could prosper.
Trump marks a radical break from that thinking. He believes those previous US presidents were suckers, ripped off by allies taking a free ride at US expense. He denies the US has any greater responsibilities than any other country: it should sacrifice nothing, looking out instead solely for itself. He’s happy for the US to be No 1 in the world, but not the world’s leader. The two are different. Like the slogan says: it’s “America first”.
For China, Russia, the Gulf states, Brazil and others there is some relief at that: they relish a future without a scolding Washington sticking its nose into their business. But for Europe, including Britain, it’s a disaster. In terms of both defence and the economy, our societies are predicated on a US-led world that will soon no longer exist.
The impact will be felt most sharply in Ukraine, which is weeks away from seeing US support fall away. Leonard fears a “Yalta-type settlement sealed by Trump and Vladimir Putin over the heads of European countries”, one that will reward Putin’s aggression and leave him emboldened. That leaves more than the likes of Moldova and the Baltic states feeling vulnerable. As the Guardian reported today, “Germany is developing an app to help people locate the nearest bunker in the event of attack. Sweden is distributing a 32-page pamphlet titled If Crisis or War Comes. Half a million Finns have already downloaded an emergency preparedness guide.” Berlin is taking steps to get the German public kriegstüchtig: war-capable.
On the continent, it’s become an urgent question: can Europe defend itself either without America or, at best, with less America? European defence spending is up and there is talk of shifting the industrial base, repurposing factories, to allow for a fast and massive, Europe-wide programme of rearmament. Our nearest neighbours understand that if the US president no longer believes in the core Nato principle of mutual defence – one for all and all for one – then, at the very least, Nato’s US pillar is gone. If Nato is to survive, the EU pillar will have to bear much of the weight alone.
It’s not clear that this penny has quite dropped in London. And remember there is a double threat here. Trump also plans to protect US domestic industry by slapping tariffs on imports from the rest of the world. China is likely to be hardest hit, with a 60% charge, but Trump wants a “universal” tariff of up to 20% on all goods coming into the US – including from Britain. For a trading nation such as the UK, that spells calamity.
What, then, can be done? On defence, Britain can vow to spend more and increase military cooperation with European allies. Fine, as far as it goes. But in the face of a trade war, Britain alone would be all but impotent against the might of the US. There is only one nearby market that is of comparable heft to the US, whose threats to retaliate against US tariffs would have a deterrent effect, a body, incidentally, that happens to be a virtuoso in the realm of trade and trade disputes. I am speaking of course of the European Union.
What’s more, these two spheres, military and economic, are no longer as distinct as they once were. When states confront each other, they no longer do it solely through bombs and bullets. Everything else gets weaponised too, whether it’s the financial system through sanctions, the supply of energy or food or technology. Witness Russia’s war against Ukraine. As it happens, these are all areas where the EU’s particular brand of cooperation can help. So when Russia moved to choke off the gas supply to individual European countries, the EU was able to step in and connect what were previously separate energy grids, thereby thwarting that threat.
The point is, the landscape of 2016 – that fateful year – no longer exists. Plenty of Brexiters believed, in good faith, that a buccaneering, free-trading Britain could thrive in a world of open borders. But that world has gone now, replaced by one of war, barriers and Darwinian competition. Whatever case you could make for Britain being out of the EU in the Obama era of 2016 makes no sense now.
I don’t expect Starmer to announce a plan to rejoin the EU tomorrow. But it’s time for outriders to start riding out. Labour MPs, perhaps the odd minister, can begin to make the case that is becoming increasingly obvious to many millions of Britons. The polls are saying it, the governor of the Bank of England is saying it. And when immigration levels are four times higher now than when we were in the EU, the issue that served as the Brexiters’ trump card lies in shreds. One by one, the premises of Britain’s 2016 decision are crumbling.
I understand the political calculus that made Labour believe Brexit was an issue best avoided. But the reality around us is changing and politicians, governments especially, have to adapt to it. In the age of Trump, when the US is no longer the predictable guarantor it once was, Britain cannot thrive alone and in the cold. It’s not ideology or idealism, but hard-headed, practical common sense to say our place is in Europe – and to say so now.
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Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
