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Sir Keir Starmer’s plan for 2026 was to talk more about the domestic issues that concern British voters. Donald Trump knocked that plan off course. US intervention in Venezuela inevitably demanded the prime minister’s attention, as did this week’s summit of Ukraine’s allies, the “coalition of the willing”, in Paris. Progress towards agreeing security guarantees for Kyiv in the event of a peace deal with Russia was overshadowed by Mr Trump restating his ambition to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark. The dust had not settled when American special forces boarded a Russian-flagged oil tanker in European waters, ostensibly to enforce a blockade against Venezuela.
Prime ministers have to multitask, but under these circumstances it is understandable if Sir Keir’s mind has been filled with foreign affairs. He should be used to this by now. Mr Trump’s return to the White House guaranteed that an already uncertain international climate would become increasingly volatile. Any hope that the incoming president’s rhetoric contained more bluster than intent was dashed when he announced his “liberation day” tariffs. He sees no value in America’s historic alliances. He despises institutions of multilateral governance. His actions may not be wholly predictable, but it is safe to assume he means what he says. He wants Greenland for America. Denmark and its Nato partners have to take the ambition seriously.
The Maga model of transatlantic relations envisages a Europe of individual client states, preferably under far-right leadership, buying American goods, no longer aggregating their economic power in ways that can rival US global clout. Mr Trump’s visceral hostility to the EU puts Brexit Britain in a strategic bind: detached from the single market but still reliant on it for trade; dependent on the US for security but no longer confident that Washington is a dependably friendly capital. Sir Keir routinely denies that this poses any kind of dilemma. His policy is to pursue closer economic ties with Europe, but stopping short of any steps that might interfere with parallel US-UK trade negotiations.
In recent months, ministers have started speaking more plainly about the costs of Brexit and the duplicitous terms on which it was sold to voters in the referendum. The shift in tone follows widespread public recognition that leaving the EU imposed costs on Britain and brought scant reward. Downing Street has become more confident in making a pro-European argument, not least because Nigel Farage and other prominent Eurosceptics look squeamish when defending a pet project that conspicuously failed. But Downing Street also refuses to consider reintegration with the single market to any degree that would require restored free movement of labour. That red line, drawn for fear of provoking opposition to higher immigration, curtails the ambition and the potential economic value of Sir Keir’s programme.
Those calculations demonstrate how completely foreign policy and domestic politics are intertwined. Sir Keir’s awkward balancing act between European solidarity and courtship of Mr Trump is not separate from his difficulty in articulating a compelling national story to compete with the radical rightwing, Maga-aligned rhetoric of Reform UK. It is the same struggle – a contest of values that demands unambiguous, principled leadership from the prime minister. It requires hard choices that Sir Keir is reluctant to acknowledge, and an assertion of Britain’s strategic interests in Europe that he has been too slow to pursue.
