Britain’s normally fractious House of Commons this week lavished cross-party praise on Prime Minister Keir Starmer for his deft diplomatic handling of the transatlantic crisis over Ukraine.
The unaccustomed display of political unity was inspired less by a recognition of Starmer’s undoubted foreign policy talents than by a near universal angst about the US’s future commitment to Europe.
Even the MAGA-admiring Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch praised Sir Keir’s consoling embrace of Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his mugging in the White House and welcomed “all of his actions” in marshalling European leaders.
Starmer’s sleight of hand has consisted in fostering European support for Ukraine, in the face of what is widely regarded as Donald Trump’s sellout to Russia, while insisting that the US remains Britain’s indispensable and reliable ally.
But how long can that useful fiction survive the growing fissures in the US-Europe alliance? And how far can Europe go in reinforcing the sovereignty of Ukraine in the face of a US policy that appears to favour something closer to unconditional Ukrainian surrender?
Europe’s collective nightmare
The US president’s decision to suspend military aid to Ukraine effectively puts Washington and its European allies on opposing sides. Among the European condemnations of the move, a French government spokesman said it made peace more distant by strengthening the hand of the Russian aggressor.
It will, however, put further pressure on Starmer and France’s President Emmanuel Macron to come up with a peace plan that will meet with Trump’s approval while protecting Ukraine’s interests.
That process remains in flux and largely dependent on the shifting whims of the White House. If and when the immediate crisis is resolved, either through a lasting settlement or, more likely, a fudged and fragile ceasefire, where does that leave Britain and its European neighbours?
The existential question for Europe, Britain included, is to determine its place in this threatened new dystopia
Europe’s collective nightmare is that the 80-year era of the transatlantic alliance and the international rules-based order may truly be over, to be replaced by a Trumpist, Putinesque era of imperial rivalry.
The existential question for Europe, Britain included, is to determine its place in this threatened new dystopia in which events would depend on the whims of strongmen in Washington, Moscow and Beijing.
In that far-from-certain worst-case scenario, Europe could be reduced within a decade to a devalued stretch of American real estate, a target for Russian territorial expansion, or a branch line on China’s Belt and Road.
Would the US really abandon Europe, however, perhaps to the extent of withdrawing from NATO? Or is Europe’s worst nightmare simply that - a nightmare, and one from which it will inevitably awake?
Having galvanised Europe into taking more responsibility for its own defence, will Trump emerge as a more subtle negotiator than he appears when it comes to facing down Vladimir Putin? Or is that just more wishful thinking?
The trust might never be restored
What Trump has indubitably done is to have broken the often sorely tested bonds of trust between the US and Europe as joint custodians of the rules-based international order.
Even if, by the end of the decade, the US recovers from what many Europeans would regard as its current nervous breakdown, that trust might never be restored.
The antipathy Trump and his MAGA circle display towards Europe may be the true face of the new America rather than a temporary aberration
The antipathy Trump and his MAGA circle display towards Europe, and leaving aside his condescendingly mawkish attachment to Britain, may be the true face of the new America rather than a temporary aberration.
Even if that turns out to be the long-term collective challenge for Europe, then the short-term dilemma is to humour Trump and keep the US as much as possible on its side despite all the contrary evidence.
The ultimate test of the Starmer strategy
So far, Starmer has played a subtle hand with the pathetic cards he was dealt. Rule one has been to not antagonise Trump, as that will do nothing to shift opinion in the White House, except possibly in the wrong direction.
That led to some toe-curling moments in Washington, as when Starmer waved King Charles’s invitation for a second state visit by Trump.
If the prime minister can painstakingly nudge Trump in the right direction, he may have proved that ‘dull but steady’ Starmerism can work
At the same time, Starmer has firmly rejected putting British boots on the ground in Ukraine as some kind of post-ceasefire force unless he has a firm US security back-up pledge from Trump. He insists that the putative presence of Americans in pursuit of an equally putative US-Ukraine minerals exploitation deal would not be enough.
That might turn out to be the ultimate test of the Starmer strategy. If Trump refuses to budge, then the Anglo-French initiative to enable Ukraine to snatch some kind of victory from the jaws of its US-assisted defeat might ultimately founder.
The UK government has already had to rip up some of its recovery agenda to meet the new security demands imposed by its ‘indispensable ally’. That includes abandoning a foreign aid commitment seen as reinforcing an international order that is now under threat.
For the moment, Starmer has the ear of the House. Depending on the immediate course of events, that might not last. If the prime minister can painstakingly nudge Trump in the right direction, he may have proved that ‘dull but steady’ Starmerism can work.
The UK diplomatic "bridge" to the US is still standing - for now. But, beyond the immediate challenges of resolving the Ukraine war, has the transatlantic relationship inexorably changed? What might US-Europe relations look like in 10 years time?
