“Have you brought the runner?” George W Bush would always ask when I visited him during his presidency. Then his face would light up as Sebastian Coe, at that time my chief of staff, came through the door.
“What’s your running time these days?” he would ask Seb. “How much can you bench-press?” Bush loved talking sport and exercise. After ten minutes of this I would have to cough politely and suggest we might move on to lesser topics such as international relations and the future of conservatism.
Each president has their own conversational style. Obama was more measured and cerebral, though also good-humoured; Biden, in any office, so talkative that no word could be inserted edgeways into his stream of stories. And usually, with a British visitor, there is much joshing about our burning down of the building in 1814 before relations improved for the past two centuries.
When Sir Keir Starmer arrives at the White House on Thursday, he faces a far more difficult task than we ever had with these former presidents. President Trump, like all of them, will turn on his courtesy and charm. Unlike them, however, he is entirely capable of declaring shortly afterwards that there is something irredeemably wrong with a visitor he has just met. This is particularly so if their poll ratings are poor, and in this case he would not be short of material.
Yet the problem is far bigger than that. We have been joined at the hip with the US since 1941. Now, almost every aspect of the British approach to world affairs – the western alliance, international law, support for Ukraine, net zero, overseas aid, a two-state solution in the Middle East – is being challenged or overturned by the ally on whom we heavily depend. We would arguably have to go back to 1814 to find a time with so many potential disagreements, and such a radically divergent world view, between president and prime minister.
How on earth, then, should our prime minister handle it? We should approach that question with humility, since we cannot know the mood of a president who deliberately cultivates unpredictability – a tactic that serves him well for the moment but that will ultimately undermine the diplomatic, strategic and financial position of the US. But of course, Starmer will want to build on the good relationship he has forged with Trump and remind him, subtly or bluntly, that Britain is usually America’s most dependable ally.
Take the most recent examples of US military action: the UK was the only European country willing and capable of joining strikes against Houthi missile sites threatening Red Sea shipping. Britain and France were the only Europeans to help shoot down Iranian drones launched against Israel. When Trump the fighter pilot flies into battle he will often find he has only one wingman, and he lives in 10 Downing Street. Look to the Arctic, a Trump obsession, and Britain is the key ally. Glance at those intelligence briefings brought to him every morning, and he might notice that a great deal of the information arises from US/UK co-operation. Even France would not come close.
That’s the easy part – pointing out Britain still matters in Washington. The next bit is harder: explaining what we will do next. Starmer would do well to follow the reported advice of our new US ambassador, Lord Mandelson, to make clear he will increase defence spending faster and further than anticipated and position the UK as a natural ally on the rapid development of AI and other new technology. But then we get to the crunch. In seeking an end to the war in Ukraine by making rapid concessions to Russia, Trump is on the verge of a historic error. Making that clear risks a bad meeting. Failing to make it clear risks a very bad world.
At least Churchill, in the form of a bust, is present in the Oval Office. Trump admires Churchill greatly. The PM might therefore wish to explain what this great predecessor said about a parallel situation in history, the abandonment of Czechoslovakia in 1938. “The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small state to the wolves is a fatal delusion”, and that surrender to force puts democracies “in an ever weaker and more dangerous situation”.
It would be a mistake to blunt this message. If Churchill could speak, he would repeat it. If Starmer doesn’t make the case now, he will always regret it when future generations ask what he said as the security of Europe disintegrated in 2025. Giving in to Putin will embolden him in the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Baltic, and China, North Korea and Iran will note the weakness and unreliability of the West. It would be a miscalculation of the very highest order.
We should not underestimate the challenge of having such a conversation. Chillingly, the president does not seem to recognise who is the aggressor in Ukraine. For Zelensky to say that Trump was living in a Russian “disinformation space” was undiplomatic, but it may well be true. The false stories spread through social media – that a peace deal was on the table in 2022, that American funds went to buy luxury yachts – have seeped into American thinking. The Republican chair of the House of Representatives intelligence committee said last April that some of his colleagues were “absolutely” repeating Russian propaganda.
This is all the more reason for a prime minister to describe reality as he sees it. He will be right to add the offer of British troops to be part of a future security force in Ukraine, but even here he needs to be very careful.
Trump the deal-maker will be eyeing a result in which the Russians get Ukrainian land, the US gets Ukrainian minerals, and British and French soldiers go to guard what is left of Ukraine. Without an emphatic American commitment to support those troops, such an outcome would be unstable as well as immoral, leaving British soldiers in a very dangerous position. Starmer will need to be categoric from the outset that he will never agree to that, so that no fudged agreement will later trap him into it.
It is hard to think of any opening bilateral meeting between a president and prime minister in modern times that has been more challenging. Among the mass of advice Starmer will receive, he should remember that all previous presidents have respected their British counterpart for speaking the truth to them. In this particular case, yes, that is a gamble. But if he doubts it is a gamble worth taking, he should fix his eyes on that bust of Churchill and think what he would say.
The Times
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