Starmer Tries to Buy Ukraine Time With Security Pitch to Trump
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Starmer Tries to Buy Ukraine Time With Security Pitch to Trump
Alex Wickham and Ellen Milligan
5 min read
(Bloomberg) -- At home, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has framed his trip to meet Donald Trump as a bid to save Ukraine and the trans-Atlantic alliance. At the White House, he’ll argue that the US president needs Europe to come out a winner.
Starmer will be in Washington on Thursday to hold his first face-to-face meeting with Trump since the populist Republican’s election to a second stint in the White House. The stakes couldn’t be higher for the prime minister, who faces a career-defining crisis, with generational implications for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the British-American “special relationship” at its core.
While Starmer can gesture toward the bust of Winston Churchill recently restored to the Oval Office, he’s hoping the UK’s fresh plans to boost defense spending to 3% of economic output over the next decade will prove more convincing to Trump. His main objective is to secure an American “backstop” for any truce between Russia and Ukraine, a cause French President Emmanuel Macron also pushed in his own White House visit earlier this week.
European leaders are scrambling to slow down talks over Ukraine’s fate after Trump’s stunning decision this month to open two-way peace negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to meet Trump on Friday, in the next procession of anxious American allies trying to hold ties together three years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Britain and France have proposed deploying “reassurance” forces to Ukraine in the event of a cease-fire with Russia. But the pair of founding NATO members want US security guarantees, including air power and intelligence, to deter future aggression from Moscow.
Without them, European officials argue that Trump will have a harder time securing the legacy of “peacemaker and unifier” that he aspired to in his inaugural address last month. Ukraine could reject the deal and fight on. Putin might feel emboldened and strike again, risking a wider European war between nuclear-armed states.
Starmer’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday that a lasting deal to stop the fighting in Ukraine was necessary for growth.
The meeting will require a delicate balance for Starmer, a left-of-center former prosecutor who had limited diplomatic experience before entering Downing Street in July. Trump dismissed Starmer as “very left-wing” in conversations with British associates before taking office, although the president has since called Starmer “very nice” and said he’s doing a “very good job.”
On the surface, the Labour government has adopted several Trump-like policies and positions since the US election — cutting Britain’s foreign aid budget, talking up the deportation of failed asylum seekers and saying it will slash financial regulation. Top officials in Starmer’s government have begun stressing internally that the era of soft power was over and that hard power was back.
Starmer should “concentrate on the substance — ask Trump where exactly does he see the ground where a deal can be struck, what movement from each side?” said Kim Darroch, who served as UK ambassador to the US between 2016 and 2019 under the last Trump administration. “Appeal to his self image: he is the experienced negotiator who has clinched a hundred deals — how is he going to extract concessions from Putin?”
Finally, Starmer needs to tell Trump that he has won, because Europe is now spending more on defense, Darroch said. The UK’s pledge on Tuesday to increase the military budget to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027 — compared with 2.3% currently — was praised by US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as a “strong step from an enduring partner.”
Caution has defined Starmer’s path to becoming the first Labour Party prime minister in 14 years and he has taken care not to criticize Trump, even while defending Zelenskiy from the US president’s claim that he’s a “dictator.” While Macron publicly contradicted Trump’s facts on Ukraine during their meeting, Starmer’s calls with the president have so far steered clear of difficult topics.
The British prime minister first met Trump during a two-hour dinner at his New York building in September. Trump has expressed confidence that trade differences with the UK can be worked out, in contrast with his more combative threats to levy tariffs on European goods.
Musk and Vance
Still, the trip is fraught with dangers for Starmer. His aides have taken lessons from how Macron handled Trump earlier in the week and would be delighted if they can get through the week without any public disagreement with the president.
Elon Musk, Trump’s billionaire adviser, has repeatedly launched vitriolic social media attacks on Starmer, and promoted Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as an alternative to Labour. Vice-President JD Vance used a speech in Munich, Germany, earlier this month to accuse Britain of eroding freedom of speech principles.
Trump has also yet to sign off on a deal which cedes British sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, home to a key US military base. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Politico last year that the deal “poses a serious threat” to US security interests in the Indian Ocean.
There are incentives Starmer can offer Trump, who has long expressed an interest in Britain, especially its golf courses and the monarchy. The prime minister is likely to offer the president a state visit and a meeting with King Charles III.
“The UK has successfully been a bridge between the US and Europe for many years: it’s vital that we continue in that role,” Starmer told the House of Commons on Wednesday. “That’s why my message to President Trump is that the relationship between our two countries needs to go from strength to strength.”
