Bliss it was, just last September, to be the “First Friend” of the United States in the second presidential era of Donald Trump. A successful state visit deployed the “golden coach” strategy to boost the Presidential ego with access to top royals and as much glitz and glamour as the British state could muster. In hard cash terms, the prize was to make the “special relationship” so attractive to Trump that Britain would receive only a mild punishment beating in the US President’s tariff splurge.
Duly, the UK got away with a 10 per cent blanket rate on exports to the US – a relatively benign outcome for car makers, chemical industries and food producers and 25 per cent tariffs on steel, as opposed to the EU’s industry-killing 50 per cent levy.
All that is solid has a propensity to melt in Trumpworld, however. A burgeoning row over Arctic security means that the UK’s hopes of being the US President’s best buddy in Europe are now being trampled in the Greenland snow.
As soon as Sir Keir Starmer aligned with his European allies in defence of Denmark’s continuing oversight of Greenland’s security, the UK has found itself threatened with additional trade penalties – an additional 10 per cent immediately, jumping to 25 per cent from June if we, and other European countries, do not agree to forfeit control of Greenland.
This is a danger to Starmer, who has coddled the administration by avoiding what one Cabinet member describes as “clash-y language” and “tip-toed around differences in ballet shoes”.
As Trump moves into a more aggressive posture, Starmer’s description of his threat as “completely wrong” marks the first time the Prime Minister has drawn a line between UK interests and those of the US. It stops short of Emmanuel Macron’s punchy pushback: “No intimidation nor threat will influence us”, while going further than Germany’s agonised Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who at the time of writing was last seen posting images of himself at a football game and promising to liaise with European partners, rather than risking a heated Germany v America clash.
Certainly, the UK is not the only country with problems arising from the US’s unfounded claim that it needs to own Greenland to protect the Arctic from Russian and Chinese meddling.
But Starmer’s government is also more exposed than others for a number of reasons. The first is that the UK stuck its neck out with the state visit and a period of intense diplomacy in a bid to remake the special relationship for the Trump era. Aspects of it do remain intact – intelligence gathering remains a close alliance, notwithstanding Trump’s meandering attitudes towards Russia.
But the days when a warmer relationship had solid outcomes in terms of trade or special treatment are at an end.
To put it bluntly, money and time spent on buttering up a mercantile US President is now largely wasted. Starmer cannot afford to be the British Prime Minister humming along to the Stars and Stripes anthem with little palpable return. But that will certainly be the accusation from political competitors both inside and outside his Cabinet, who will claim he leaned too far towards the US (and it is never hard to re-awaken latent anti-Americanism in parts of Labour).
The second woe is that Starmer is becoming hamstrung by a declared aim to move closer to the EU in trading relations and general outlook – but with very little sign that an otherwise preoccupied European Union is reciprocating. Ratifying the gigantic Mercosur trade deal with Latin America, covering around 700 million people, is a far bigger concern for the EU than the realignment aspirations of Starmer, who wants to solidify a pro-European voters base in the UK and attract Greens and Lib Dems back to a progressive fold.
The final mega-risk for the Starmer government after the last torrid week is that an antsy US administration has concluded that Europe is a continent of time-wasting losers. Britain sits awkwardly here as a staunch NATO ally, when America’s view is that NATO now essentially “is” what the US says it should be, rather than a collective security pact.
For Starmer, whose domestic achievements are slight, the prospect of more punishment to UK trade could imperil his promise of 2026 being a year of upward momentum in the economy and relief for the cost of living. Having greatly annoyed business in its first tax-raising budget, the promised re-connection of Labour with UK business now takes place against a backdrop of anxiety for many exporters.
Being piggy in the middle means the UK is neither seen as part of full-fat “Yurrup” in the Trump administration’s eyes, which is a small advantage. Yet neither is it being heeded as a modifying power whose special understanding with the US brings some tangible benefit. Even some embellishments, like UK participation in the “Board of Peace” overseeing the post-war arrangements to stabilise Gaza, with a role on the executive board offered to Tony Blair, are prone to the “Dollar First” amendments.
According to Bloomberg this weekend, the administration is looking for each country seeking a permanent membership, rather than a temporary gig in Middle East peace-making, to pay $1bn (£747m) – a request nicely described by the Atlantic magazine as akin to “an application to join an upscale golf club” with the allocation of funding under the control of Trump as the overall head of the board.
Maybe this latest flashpoint will pass off, as they sometimes do in the Trump era, on the principle dubbed TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). That means US threats end watered down after the initial onslaught. And Starmer is fundamentally correct to argue that the best way forward is a multi-lateral, beefed-up “Defence of Greenland Agreement”, not a shakedown over levies on steel and smoked salmon. But right against might is not a promising duel these days – a truth haunting a Prime Minister who welcomed the US President in style, only to find that the substance has gone missing.
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