If there’s a favourite word in Sir Keir Starmer’s No 10 right now, it’s delivery. Looking back at this week and breathing a sigh of relief, officials see the months spent building key relationships with Trump’s key aides as having paid off. The week, which had started so badly, ended on a high.
The hours spent negotiating with Buckingham Palace over the royal programme, the OTT military displays and the millions of pounds spent on security had resulted in a successful delivery. For a No 10 buffeted by events, it was a sign Starmer’s premiership has still more road to run.
At the start of the week, nobody was nearly so cheerful. Starmer was buffeted by questions over his political judgment after the mishandled sacking of UK ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson and the departure of Angela Rayner over her tax affairs.
On Monday and Tuesday, some Labour MPs gloomily predicted the Epstein affair would dominate all the questions at Thursday’s Chequers news conference. In the end Trump, sidestepped the Epstein question by implausibly claiming he didn’t know Mandelson.
Behind the scenes – as the public (and semi-public) criticism of Starmer was making its way into the press and across the airwaves – a fightback was underway by Wednesday.
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While some MPs spent the early part of the week panicking, wiser heads took it upon themselves to reassure their more inexperienced colleagues, some of whom have only been in Parliament for 14 months after being elected last year.
“The panic wasn’t just in the ’24 lot, some ministers were too, but I think the ’24 cohort is particularly susceptible to panic in a way that I find quite extraordinary,” one long-serving Labour MP said. “Some of them just need to calm the hell down; it’s a long time ’til local elections and even longer until the general.”
The MP also suggested the briefing was coming from disgruntled ministers who had been moved aside at the reshuffle.
“It’s quite hard for those who were sacked to separate their understandable concern for the direction of the Government with their inner anger,” they added.
With Trump safely back in the US, attention in the party is now turning to Labour conference in Liverpool, which starts a week on Sunday.
“The Trump visit went well and that sucked a lot of attention and oxygen away from the immediate crisis that was around at the start of the week,” one party aide remarked.
They predicted Starmer is likely to emerge from his keynote speech having done enough to reassure the party. Instead, the Budget at the end of November is seen as the next moment of political danger.
No 10 has certainly spent a long time prepping for Starmer’s annual speech, which falls on the Tuesday of the gathering – with drafts worked up as early as August.
“Quite a lot of his conference speeches have been quite good and gone down well. So if he delivers a good one, then I kind of see how that kind of calms everyone down a bit. Then, the next crunch point is the Budget,” the aide predicted.
But next week will also see the underlying tension of the deputy leadership contest played out in advance of the conference. In Liverpool, Labour grassroots members will watch hustings between candidates Lucy Powell – recently sacked from Cabinet – and Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, on the Wednesday.
“Whoever wins will reveal what the membership thinks of Keir – whether a cabinet minister will be punished by proxy by association, or whether the members just want to give him a bloody nose,” an MP said. “That has longer-term implications, even if Keir gets on with delivery, like he says he will.”
But one of Trump’s major warnings at the Chequers news conference was about migration, when he suggested Starmer send in the navy to turn back small boats on the channel.
Some Labour MPs think Starmer needs to use his conference speech to directly take on the arguments brought over to the UK by the MAGA crowd: religion, patriotism, free speech and tackling migration.
“Keir needs to speak to the values behind everything we’re trying to do. What is the big argument for why Labour are not Reform?” one Labour MP suggested.
“His speech doesn’t even have to have loads of policy in it, but he does need to come out and tell our side of the story about how we are pro-patriotism – not nationalism. It’s got to be a much bigger argument which fills in the gap where no one knows what we stand for. At the moment no one knows what we’re about,” the MP said.
Even with more crunch points nearing, No 10 can afford to relax this weekend. A difficult week ended nowhere near as badly as some Labour doomsayers had predicted. A recognition of Palestinian statehood on Sunday will go down well with the party’s membership, too.
What Starmer delivered at Chequers was a genuine rapport with Trump, even though Starmer appeared tense at the possibility his guest could go rogue at any point.
Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, his deputy Jill Cuthbertson and trade negotiator Varun Chandra are credited with having made the visit run so smoothly. The result was £150bn of inward investment in Britain and a taming of Trump’s tariffs on cars, aerospace – and to a lesser degree – steel.
“Varun is a very good negotiator and very good at getting a deal, because he has a really clear idea of what it is the other side want, what would be helpful, what wouldn’t be helpful and what the unknown bit is – because obviously you don’t know exactly how they’ll react to everything you might suggest. Keir is very lucky to have him and with the trade deals and getting the tariffs sorted he’s clearly proven his worth,” one Government insider said.
However hard No 10 officials worked charming Trump’s administration, they were never going to top the glamour of the Princess of Wales in floor-length couture. Tellingly, according to his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, Trump’s highlight of the trip was the banquet at Windsor Castle. It was the royals he wanted – and got.
And having played the state visit card so early on in his premiership, there are questions about where Starmer goes from here, with no future bribes left to offer. There are ongoing questions about whether the UK can get steel tariffs down or settle a dispute over NHS drugs prices with the US.
“It was right to give him the full-on bling,” one Labour MP said of Trump, adding ruefully: “But next time, what is it we give him? The crown jewels?”
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