The British Foreign Office set a low bar for Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to America—don’t fall out with King Donald
By Tom Arms
The British Foreign Office set a low bar for Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to America—don’t fall out with King Donald. He succeeded.
That is not to say that substantive issues were not discussed. They were and included:
Tariffs—and the possibility, nay probability, of reviving the Johnson era US-UK trade deal that could exempt Britain from the crippling tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on the EU.
The Chagos Islands— Trump is inclined to go along with the British position.
And Ukraine:–On this top of the agenda item Sir Keir Failed. Trump was immovable—No backstop. No security guarantees and total confidence in the honesty of fellow dissembler Vladimir Putin.
The tete a tete started with a cringe-making pantomime when in front of the world’s media the prime minister reached into his suit pocket and drew out a letter from King Charles III.
It was the expected invitation to Trump to make an historic second state visit to Buckingham Palace.
Royal Family fan Donald evinced childlike surprise and delight at the expected letter and the friendly tone was set for the private talks in the Oval Office. The first box was ticked.
An Anglo-American trade deal has long been one of Trump’s priorities. Not because of any love for the royal family or the homeland of his mother. No, Donald Trump wants a trade deal with Britain because he hates the EU. It is a threat to American trade hegemony. Trump wants to encourage its break-up and insure that Britain does not return to the European fold by pulling it closer to America.
In any upcoming trade talks the British public will be focused on chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-fed beef and higher prices for NHS drugs. The attention of Trump’s negotiators will be on coordinating regulations across a wide-range of goods and services to make it more difficult for Britain to negotiate re-entry into the European single market and/or customs union.
The Chagos Islands dispute is a colonial hangover. It is centered on Diego Garcia which Mauritius says is theirs. The International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the African Union and a host of other international organizations and countries agree with Mauritius.
The problem is that the island is a strategically-placed military base with a major air base, deep-water anchorage and communications hub for the Indo-Pacific region. The island is owned by Britain and leased to the US until 2036. Since 2022 Mauritius and the UK have been negotiating the future of the islands with Britain insisting that any agreement must include the continued presence of the American military.
Ensuring American support for the British position of helping America was low-hanging diplomatic fruit, but allowed the Foreign Office and Downing Street to claim a win.
More difficult was Ukraine. Sir Keir flew to Washington to repeat the position outlined by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week: A ceasefire with European and British peacekeeping forces backed up by American security guarantees. Trump has no problem with European peacekeepers (although it is noteworthy that Vladimir Putin has vehemently ruled it out). It is the all-important back-up where he and Europe part company.
Trump maintains that American miners extracting rare earth minerals will be a sufficient back-up. That Russia would not dare attack while American miners are on Ukrainian soil. There are a number of problems with that position. The miners would not be armed and they are not soldiers. Putin could simply order his troops not to bother them and Trump could withdraw them if they were in danger.
Finally, as of this writing, there is no mining agreement between the US and Ukraine. That may quickly change because Volodomyr Zelensky is flying to Washington as I type with the expressed purpose of signing such an agreement, or, at least a heads of agreement. But the problem is that Trump and Zelensky are approaching the signing ceremony from two very different starting positions.
Trump wants Ukraine’s mineral rights as payment for past military aid but without any guarantee of future American support. Zelensky is reluctantly prepared to sign away his country’s natural resources in return for past military support AND future military support.
A probable trade deal is good news but only if it does not move Britain further away from its near neighbors in Europe. Support for the British position on the Chagos Islands was a given. The apparent personal rapport is important, especially when one half of the relationship is totally unpredictable. But failure to move Trump on Ukraine will have repercussions which will be felt for decades and means that success in other areas pales into insignificance.
World Review
World ReviewEurope’s largest economy and largest population has lurched to the right. Friedrich Merz is on the conservative wing of the right of center Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been relegated to the number three slot for the first in post-war German history. But, more importantly, the far-right Alternativ fur Deutschland (AFD) is now firmly entrenched in the number two position.
Electoral success such as that enjoyed by the AfD in last weekend’s federal elections would normally ensure a place in a coalition government. Not in Germany, the mainstream parties have agreed to a firewall between themselves and the AfD that prohibits political cooperation between themselves and the AfD.
It was this firewall that was recently attacked as “undemocratic” by US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference.
But then America does not have the burden of a Nazi past which many Germans fear the AfD threatens to resurrect. It favours remigration which many interpret as a mass deportation of immigrants. It is Euro-sceptic; anti-LGBTQ; pro-Russian; opposes sending military aid to Ukraine and is ambivalent about Germany’s Nazi past. Germany’s Committee for the Protection of the Constitution has designated the AfD as an “extremist right-wing” organization which means it is being closely monitored by the police and security services.
But the AfD garnered 20.8 percent of the vote—double what it won in the previous federal election. The party—or at least its policies—cannot be disregarded, especially its position on immigration.
The traditional German mainstream parties—CDU/CSU, FDP, SPD and Greens—have tended to deal with the immigration issue by ignoring it. In the case of the CDU, Angela Merkel went further and declared that Germany had a moral responsibility to help refugees and in 2015 admitted more than a million and laid the foundations of a backlash.
The new soon-to-be Chancellor Merz is determined to win back AfD supporters by stealing some of their clothes and introducing tough anti-immigrant legislation.
The difficulty is that the AfD has positioned itself as the only party willing to talk about immigration and propose radical action to tackle the perceived problem. If Merz and the CDU position themselves in this space, they risk being perceived as a less authentic version of the AfD. Voters are convinced that the AfD cares passionately about limiting immigration. They may be less convinced that it is a genuine priority of the CDU.
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The famed British Welfare State is threatened by the American withdrawal from Europe and the resultant increase in defense spending.
In fact, social spending belts across Europe will need to tighten as money is poured into missiles, drones, tanks and howitzer shells to protect Western Europe from the Russian bear.
This week, British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, announced that he was cutting overseas aid from 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent to pay for an increase in defense spending from 2.3 to 2.5 percent by 2027 and three percent by the end of the decade.
The cuts in aid will put $15 billion in the British exchequer which is enough to fund the increased spending up to 2.5 percent but not enough to go all the way to three percent. And, the fact is, that three percent is unlikely to be enough. American officials are talking about five percent across Europe if they want to keep Donald Trump happy and in NATO. And if the US abandons Europe as feared than defense costs will be much, much higher.
Britain, devotes 25 percent of GDP on welfare spending and another 10 percent of GDP on the NHS. Other European countries spend between 25 percent and 30 percent on social welfare. Funding structures for health services varies.
So, if Europe is going to properly defend itself – and defense is the first priority of every government—then it must find the extra money from somewhere other than cuts in overseas aid. Many would say increase taxes on major corporations. The problem is that this would deter investment in British and European governments and hit growth (and by association tax revenues) which is already stagnant in most European countries.
Tax rich individuals. In theory raising the tax threshold from 45 to 50 percent for those earning $190,000 or more would raise $22 billion a year which would be more than enough to pay to pay for increased defense spending. But that figure depends on every high income earner paying the full whack and not moving assets offshore, tax evasion, tax avoidance or just changing country of residence.
That leaves borrowing—which is already too high—or cuts in health and welfare spending. Or, the most likely alternative, higher taxes and cuts. Everybody—breathe in.
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There is an advantage to increased defense spending—it is an engine of economic growth. It can also be a technological innovator and the source of major exports.
The precursor of the Internet was a Pentagon bankrolled project called the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (aka APRANET). The convenient maps on your mobile phone and your car’s satnav are the result of an American navigation system. The Boeing 707 is based entirely on military designs and the list goes on and on and…..
The Russian economy is being kept afloat by the need to rapidly increase defense manufacturing to feed the insatiable Ukraine war machine. In February 2022, 2.4 million people were employed in defense manufacturing. By March 2024 this figure had swollen to 3.8 million and average salaries had risen ten percent in real terms. Higher wages, of course, means more money for the Russian exchequer.
Russia is also the world’s second largest arms exporter with 11 percent of the global market. Although it is well behind the United States which manages to take 46 percent of world arms exports. Britain is well down the list—seventh with 3.7 percent of the market. It has slipped considerably since the height of the Cold War when the UK had nearly seven percent of the international arms exports industry and was fourth in world rankings.
Britain, however, is a leader in aerospace technology through BAE Systems. Through this company and others Britain directly employs 163,000 well-paid and highly-skilled worker. It also has a strong base in engineering and technology education which churns out about 42,000 qualified graduates every year.
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He is also the author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War” and “America Made in Britain.”
