Starmer is seeking to both defend Britain’s economic interests and offer himself as a bridge to Europe. It’s a continent struggling to catch up with Trump’s decision to negotiate directly with Russia to end the war in Ukraine while potentially sidelining Kyiv and its allies from the process entirely.
Macron will meet Trump in Washington on Monday making him the first European leader to travel to the US capital since Trump’s inauguration. Starmer will arrive three days later, on Thursday. They have very different styles.
This week Macron is likely to appeal to Trump’s ego and strongman complex. During a Q&A on social media on Thursday, the French President said he will try to convince Trump that sidelining Ukraine would be seen as caving in to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands and would portray him as weak in the eyes of China and Iran.
The message UK diplomats and politicians have been sending both publicly and privately is that it’s time for calm alongside cool heads. “A lot of work has been done to try and roll the pitch in conversations,” a Government source told The i Paper. Foreign Secretary David Lammy is likely to accompany Starmer to the White House.
But once the cameras have withdrawn from the pastel-coloured Oval Office, just how tough is Starmer prepared to get? So far, the softly softly approach has been his hallmark, but as a strategy it appears to have reached its limit. Trump’s statements are just getting more and more outlandish. If next week isn’t crunch time, it’s hard to see when it is.
“From our point of view that’s actually not a bad thing,” a UK government source told The i Paper. That’s because the meetings planned between No 10, the Foreign Office and the National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell early next week to prepare for their own visit can take lessons from how Macron is received by Trump and recalibrate accordingly. The war-gaming in London will be determined by what comes out of the first round of French-US diplomacy.
Starmer can make the claim that the UK is a better ally to the US than the French when it comes to defence and security. Britain is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence community, whereas France sits outside it. Meanwhile, Britain is part of the AUKUS defence alliance centred on nuclear submarines. Starmer could also remind the US that while Britain offers up its nuclear deterrent for Nato’s use, France does not. France also spends 2.06 per cent of its GDP on defence, compared to the UK’s 2.33 per cent.
Meanwhile, complicating the discussions is the jockeying for position in Trump’s top team, with contradictory remarks on Ukraine coming from Vice President JD Vance, Defence Secretary Marco Rubio and Ukrainian Envoy Keith Kellogg. That’s made calibrating what Trump says and what Trump means even more difficult, Government sources suggested. “We’ve been scratching our heads a lot. Who is speaking for the administration when they are talking over each other?” one official queried.
Where the pair differ is in how they protect their domestic interests. Since November Starmer has dodged the questions over whether he will choose between the US or EU on trade. Part of the discussion with Trump is likely to focus on securing an opt-out for British industries from tariffs. France, locked into the European Union trading bloc, can do no such deal.
An open question in government is how long Starmer can hold the line and keep saying he will announce a timeline for hitting the spending target when a strategic defence review is published before the summer.
Keir Starmer needs to find his backbone - and stand up to Trump
Read MoreThe Chagos Islands are likely to come up next week in discussions, The i Paper understands, but it is unclear whether the US administration has yet to come to a fixed position on the deal. This is another moment of danger for Starmer.
Trump has hitherto, to everyone’s slight surprise, been fairly nice about Starmer. This will be the week to see if that holds.
“Fundamentally, it’s the total acceptance that this is big-power diplomacy” between Trump and Starmer, a Government source said. “It’s all about the two men eyeballing each other and whether one blinks first.”
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