Keir Starmer heads to Washington to build bridges between Europe and the US

Keir Starmer is set to perform the most risky balancing act since becoming British Prime Minister almost eight months ago. His visit to Washington has a triple objective: to convince Donald Trump that his country remains the most reliable ally on the other side of the Atlantic (the “special relationship” since the days of Winston Churchill); to coordinate his efforts with European allies to redirect the Ukraine crisis and for everyone to speak with one voice, now that he is desperately seeking a reset of relations with the European Union; and finally, to protect British commercial interests in the face of a tariff trade war that is finding London in the cold and lonely zone where Brexit left it.

Upon arriving in the U.S. capital on Wednesday evening, Starmer again insisted that the Trump Administration must be involved in ensuring Ukraine’s security in order to reach a sustainable peace deal with Russia.

Every prime minister hopes to dance alone with the new tenant of the White House. Tony Blair played at being Europe’s mediator with Washington, when George W. Bush had already decided on his own to launch a devastating war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Starmer is currently working hand-in-hand with French President Emmanuel Macron. The two exchanged information by phone after the latter’s visit to the White House earlier this week. And a meeting of “several European leaders” is being prepared for this Sunday in London — it remains unclear who will be there — to discuss future defense plans.

But the British leader wanted to make his own gestures, gradually, so that his welcome in the American capital would be as warm as possible. He was the first to commit to sending soldiers to Ukraine as a peacekeeping force, as suggested by Washington. He was the first to officially commit to increasing his defense budget (from 2.3% of GDP to 2.5% in April 2027, and a pledge to reach 3% in the next legislative period). And he made this decision at the cost of reducing spending on development aid, from 0.5% down to 0.3%. It was the same coldness and the same display of priorities expressed by the Trump administration when it cut the foreign aid budget of the Agency for International Development (USAID).

“At times like this the defense and security of the British people must always come first, that is the number one priority of this Government,” said Starmer to justify a decision that has put humanitarian aid organizations on alert and scandalized a section of the Labour Party.

“We are a government of pragmatists, not ideologues, and we have had to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security.,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy responded immediately in an article for The Guardian newspaper.

Nods of approval from Washington

Starmer shared the decision to increase military spending with a very small circle of his team, but ordered his defense secretary, John Healey, to immediately communicate the news to his American counterpart, Pete Hegseth, minutes before the prime minister made it public in his speech to the House of Commons. “A strong step from an enduring partner,” Hegseth immediately reacted on his account on the social network X.

The British prime minister is pursuing goals identical to those of the EU, which focus on stopping Trump’s desire to disengage from NATO and the security of the continent. “Over the coming weeks and months, can a deal be done where the war stops, Ukraine does not feel defeated, Europe does not feel imperilled and transatlantic relations are as near to conventional as possible? It is not going to be easy. The prime minister’s trip to the White House is but one building block in developing answers to these questions,” wrote BBC political editor Chris Mason.

Starmer’s maneuvers are aimed at these goals, but they are not entirely altruistic. They also seek to place the United Kingdom in the best possible situation in the face of a geopolitical earthquake that has caught everyone off guard. “We must reject any false choice between our allies, between one side of the Atlantic or the other,” he said in Parliament on Tuesday.

The prime minister wants to secure a special protection for the United Kingdom against the threat of tariffs that Trump has launched against Europe. He will try to convince the president that the trade balance between their two countries is sufficiently balanced to not require extraordinary punishments. And he will again offer him the British alliance with America’s big tech companies for the advancement and exploitation of Artificial Intelligence.

Starmer has shown a virtuous caution in recent weeks, ignoring provocations from members of Trump’s entourage such as billionaire Elon Musk and Vice President J. D. Vance, while seeking common ground and praising the U.S. president’s strategy in Ukraine as a wake-up call for Europe. It remains to be seen whether all these gestures, like the displays of complicity between Macron and Trump earlier this week, will succeed in bringing about any change in Trump’s policy, or whether they will be reduced to temporary truces awaiting the next surprise.

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