Comment: What next for the special relationship in a second Trump term Published on: 8 November 2024 Writing for The Conversation, Dr Martin Farr discusses the issues Keir Starmer will have to navigate now Donald Trump has been re-elected. , Keir Starmer may well have gone to bed on Tuesday night hoping to wake up on Wednesday morning to find himself teamed professionally with Kamala Harris – a fellow state prosecutor of the centre-left who happens also to be the leader of both the free world and his country’s closest ally. His reverie might even have extended to envisage a mutually-beneficial two-term relationship of harmony and even intimacy, not unlike that of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. But shocking (if explicable) as it may seem, Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States for the second time, and with an unimpeachable mandate. Memories in London of Trump’s first, unpredictable, improvised administration, one which occasioned between a president and prime minister, and then a portentous , are vivid. But this time, London is prepared. Two strokes of fortune have enabled Starmer to connect with Trump, something former Conservative prime minister Theresa May was unable to do in 2016. The first was the assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in July. had the wit to woo, with a phone call to the victim that was much appreciated. Two months later, with his foot already in the golden elevator door of Trump Tower, Starmer was hosted by the former president in New York. No photographers were present. It was not a campaign event. It was a meeting that mattered. The call and the dinner were both enabled by the UK ambassador to the US, Dame Karen Pierce. The adroit indeed owes her position to the fact that, in a diplomatic innovation, the then-president effectively . The embassy has always been central to UK-US relations, and never more so than now. Pierce’s public response to Trump’s victory was . His re-election means her re-appointment. Want more politics coverage from academic experts? Every week, we bring you informed analysis of developments in government and fact check the claims being made.Sign up for our weekly , delivered every Friday. Preparedness, however, does not entirely efface earlier embarrassments. The Trump campaign made a mountain out of the molehill of Labour members for the Harris campaign. And Starmer had already displayed his political inexperience by accusing Trump publicly of . More from David Lammy, now foreign secretary, though oft-cited, are no more than embarrassing. Lammy’s expansive manner – and Christianity – complements that of many in Trump’s circle, and his relations with vice president-elect J.D. Vance, and Elbridge Colby, likely to have a foreign policy role under Trump, are . Keir Starmer phones president-elect Donald Trump. , Trump, for his bombast, is transactional: , and . He distinguishes between rhetoric and deals. The former matters if it facilitates the latter. And if the prime minister has a defining political characteristic, it’s as a technocrat; a dispatcher of business. Such for the American will unsettle some in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and much of the wider membership. Starmer may take a lesson from how Harold Wilson trod the tightrope of the Vietnam war: prevented from either supporting or opposing American involvement, he sought instead, impotently, to mediate. Pleasing nobody, Wilson nevertheless kept his party intact. The new leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, is much more politically aligned with the president-elect. In her first PMQs, she gleefully punched the bruises not only of the foreign secretary’s remarks, but the equally injudicious signing of a petition by Labour backbenchers, many of whom are now ministers. She also called for a free trade agreement. A US-UK free trade agreement was a post-Brexit policy of the previous Conservative government, as indeed it was of the previous Trump administration. But it did not happen, and it’s no more likely now with a president whose favourite word is . In some respects, the special relationship is nothing if not asymmetric. The global view Unable to stand again, re-elected presidents tend to become “lame ducks”, leaching authority as they limp to the end of their term. This is partly because they usually lose control of Congress, and with the undoubted allure of global statesmanship, indulge themselves in foreign policy. The essence of the special relationship – close cooperation over defence, security and, especially, intelligence – will endure. But questions arise as to the consequences of the changes in US priorities over the most serious global issues: Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Iran, China, trade and the climate. In Trump’s absence, and in loose association, . The UK may feel need to assume greater leadership – or at least convening – roles, within existing alliances and arrangements including Nato, Aukus (a security partnership with the US and Australia), European Quad (US, UK, France and Germany), and the Joint Expeditionary Force (a UK-led defence and security coalition). There are already some , given the president-elect’s record of with other – hostile – leaders. – but Europe wasn’t at war. Britain has been the most reliable supporter of Ukrainian resistance in the security council, or the G7, and this is likely to be the most serious policy difference from day one. Discouragingly for Ukraine, the asymmetry will prevail. Trump’s expected renunciation of Ukraine may mean further pressure for London to increase defence spending, already a pinch point even before the effects on global economic output of a Trump trade war . Starmer personally will also benefit from relative weakness in European leadership: of the (Germany, France and the UK), French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz are all too evidently end-term. But Hungary’s and Italy’s may be more to the taste of the Trump administration, and will be able to stomach more than even the most solicitous British prime minister can manage. The British government shamelessly leveraged in his first term. But he has been taken to Churchill’s birthplace, and to his home, and has met Queen Elizabeth II (some aspects of his can’t be repeated). And King Charles III, a devoted environmentalist, will have to be at his most impartial when faced with a fellow head of state intent on unpicking the global response to the . London’s best personal cards may have already been played. In any case, the neophyte president was probably more susceptible then. Trump’s second administration will be more predictable, and consequential, than his first: greater focus, more intent. This time he, too, is prepared. There’s a great deal for the British Embassy to do before his inauguration in January. Not the least of its priorities will be to ensure that Starmer is the first foreign visitor to the Trump White House. That phone call in July could well bear fruit. , Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, This article is republished from under a Creative Commons license. Read the . 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