Illustration by Nate Kitch
This might seem a coarse question: but is Donald Trump all right? Inviting Vladimir Putin to join the Gaza “Board of Peace” and charging other countries $1bn to have a spot on it; trying to use tariffs to bully Denmark and European nations into surrendering Greenland to him; writing a letter to the Norwegian prime minister explaining, “Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize… I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace.”
Trump Derangement Syndrome was once a phrase describing the hypnotised fury of liberals about the US president. This week it takes on another meaning. That, in turn, makes life very difficult for would-be candid allies, such as Keir Starmer.
The Prime Minister did well when he politely but firmly turned down the Trump Greenland shakedown recently; so too when he explained to British voters why his standard-of-living agenda was inextricably linked to world events. But this is a time for abnormal courage and he must go further – I think, far further. Trump’s Greenland threat is a brutal reminder that the UK is the wrong size. It is too little – militarily, economically and diplomatically – to influence the great powers of the modern world, either the US or China. If this is a world of bullies – and it is – we are too small.
But we are also too big. We cannot be a modest, neutralist social democracy barely noticed by the rest of the world yet able to trade peacefully and tax our way into social democratic bliss. Because of our role and history in Nato, our strategic positioning and the (mostly virtuous) belligerence of our leaders, we are Russia’s number one enemy. The Chinese, for good historical reasons, also dislike us intensely. And it doesn’t stop there. Because of our imperial history, we are a destination, irritant and emotional challenge for Indians, Africans and people across the Middle East. We are too small to shape events – still less dominate others – but too big to hide or be left alone.
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This problem of being the wrong size has been evident since the Second World War, but it has been mostly hidden, through various blinds and veils. In the aftermath of the war, there was still the illusion of a victor’s imperial reach. British regiments were on the front line in Korea, policing Egypt, defeating communist insurgency in Malaya. We were big. India might have gone – but Australia was our California, Canada our Colorado. The Standard Vanguard and the Austin A40 pootled round the world.
Those in the know – those who scrutinised the trade figures and contemplated the costs of Cold War confrontation – understood that these were flickers of the old spirit, during the retreat of a nearly bankrupted country. But for Britain as a whole, the illusion only ended, briskly enough, at Suez in 1956.
But illusion was replaced by concealment rather than reckoning. We tried the Commonwealth, but no one other than the late Queen wholly believed in that. Then came “Europe” – intertwined from the start with the last great act of diplomatic camouflage, the “special relationship” with the US, expressed first through Nato.
The American relationship always involved a private humiliation that British prime ministers understood. From the moment when Harold Macmillan made his Nassau agreement with JFK in 1962, surrendering British nuclear independence for Polaris, the Brits were firmly under the fat American thumb. Both sides pretended, at least a little. General de Gaulle was not fooled, rejecting Britain’s application to join the Common Market a year later because Britain would be a US Trojan horse and Europe “would take on the appearance of a colossal Atlantic community under American dependence and direction”.
The ins and outs that followed, all that tragicomic history of Britain and what is now the EU, is well known. We’d be in the club, but only if we were in charge. We needed the heft of a big bloc but wouldn’t surrender being the fount of the “English speaking peoples” or take orders from continentals.
After Brexit, we might well have survived as America’s closest ally, had America been keen. Donald Trump, it turns out, is not. West Highland mummy, golf courses and handwritten notes from Charles III notwithstanding, this mercurial and unsentimental man means it when he says America First.
Guided by Jonathan Powell and the instincts of the Blair government, Starmer has done everything humanly possible to keep the man onside. He has bitten his tongue so much there can’t be much of it left. He has laughed when he didn’t feel like laughing; deferred when he really disagreed; picked papers from the ground and bowed his head. Indeed, I would say that much of the Prime Minister’s diminished reputation as a national leader goes back to the self-censorship and insincerity needed to handle Trump.
Last year it seemed the kowtowing was justified. Now we see that, strategically, it’s won squat-all. This latest threat of Greenland-related tariffs would be devastating for Jaguar Land Rover, which Starmer tried so hard to protect, and for the British steel industry, or what’s left of it. But even beyond the economic hit, the crude blatancy of the bullying leaves any European with no choice but to refuse. Trump uses tariffs like gunboats.
Despite Starmer’s warm words, the Greenland protection racket takes us towards the end of Nato and the special relationship. The likelihood of President Trump actually following Article 5 to help a European country already seemed questionable. He’s friendlier to Putin than he is, for instance, to France.
In the New Statesman, I have argued consistently that the only options for the UK begin with serious rearmament: an effective army and navy; proper missile defence; world-class cyber. George Robertson’s Strategic Defence Review last year showed what’s needed. It received a rhetorical welcome from Starmer – but not yet the money, or the urgency, or the political leadership that’s needed to persuade voters to make the sacrifices required for serious defence.
But there is now a great opportunity for a Labour leader who wants to take on Nigel Farage’s Reform. Farage is seen as a natural friend of Putin, and an acolyte of Trump, with no enthusiasm for rebuilding the British military, or genuine national independence. When Robert Jenrick came to make his dark defection speech last week, he did not bother to mention Trump, Iran or Greenland. As Margaret Thatcher’s biographer Charles Moore noted, “It contained nothing about the world crisis. Conservatism should not be limited to the single issue of immigration.”
Kemi Badenoch was clearly watching, and widened her attack in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. Reform’s former Welsh leader took bribes from Russia, she noted: “They are afraid to speak seriously about hostile states, alliances, defence, intelligence, or economic security, and when they aren’t afraid, they don’t know what to say.”
There is a challenge and a warning here for Labour. As Trump pulls away, Britain desperately needs a security government, one prepared to restore its defences and alliances. This, by the way, is not the same as a bellicose government, noisily challenging Russia, provoking her on the high seas, and sabre-rattling during these years of obvious sabre-shortage. We need less bluster, but to be quiet, determined and consistent. Starmer’s bigger national purpose, survival in a dangerous time, is looking for him even when he isn’t looking for it.
That is the challenge: plain talking about hard truths; finding the money – via taxing, borrowing or cutting – to rebuild our defences at pace. That could bring real pride and purpose to replace the zig-zagging and self-abasement of recent times. And if the call doesn’t come from Labour, it will start to come from the Tories. If not Keir, then Kemi.
How, you may ask, should Labour distinguish itself from Badenoch & Co? Here is where the second call for courage comes in. Tory Eurosceptic Atlanticism is a dying creed. We are a European country, with European dilemmas, European fears, European strengths. In Trump’s world, it is time for a tilt back to Europe. I don’t mean full membership; I mean the customs union.
Let’s look at the obvious arguments against this. The first is that the right-wing media will cry betrayal – and many voters will agree. It’s too late, however: a tiny nudge has already brought the Express spittle-flecked, crying “Full-blown Brexit betrayal” on its front page. The rest of the right-wing press thinks similarly and Brexity voters made their minds up about Starmer long ago. They were primed for “treason” on the day he walked into No 10. Electorally, they are long lost.
So now Starmer should draw a deep breath and go for broke. Being open to a closer arrangement with the EU to improve both prosperity and security, is a timely argument. If Greenland doesn’t show it, nothing will. Wes Streeting’s secret power isn’t wit or loquacity. It’s his readiness to run towards an argument – his courage – and this is a fight his boss needs to run towards. The Trump crisis is an opportunity: make the case this spring or lose the argument, and perhaps the premiership, by the summer.
The second argument against a tilt to Europe is the nature of the EU itself: it doesn’t want us back and, anyway, European countries are heading to the populist right. But surely Trump’s behaviour is already changing the calculus in Brussels. And on the “populist” argument, well – we are in the same place.
The default assumption has become that Britain is heading towards a Reform government. But the Trump crisis changes everything. Voters will ask where Reform would position Britain in relation to Nato, Putin and the US – where Reform, in short, thinks our place in the world is. This is Labour’s perhaps final chance for a big strategic move – if it has the courage.
[Further reading: Trump has become the West’s Mad King]