Can Britain score an easy win with Trump on Ukraine?

Keir Stamer has landed in Washington, where he joins the succession of European leaders lining up to convince the president of the United States that he’s got it wrong on Ukraine. But will the British prime minister be convincing?

Starmer and Donald Trump will meet today at the White House, arriving just after 1 p.m. ET. The pair are set for talks, lunch and a press conference, taking up several hours of the afternoon. The PM has arrived with some points to make about Ukraine — mainly the insistence that the US provides a “security guarantee” for the country under siege — but he’s got some kind words to deliver, too.

Starmer will be hoping the optics paint him and Trump as equals — in leadership, anyway

Speaking at the British Ambassador’s Residence yesterday, Starmer said that, despite Trump’s latest comments on Zelensky, he still does trust the president and feels optimistic that the Special Relationship will continue to go from “strength to strength.”

“We want to work with you,” Starmer said in a speech ahead of the meeting today. “We want to welcome you to Britain.” This will no doubt be music to the president’s ears, who puts special emphasis on his trips to Britain — mainly the opportunity for a state visit and the chance to meet with the royal family, the likes of which he had with the late Queen.

Starmer has plenty of trouble to deal with at home (rising taxes, no growth, disappearing jobs, a surging outsider party), but when it comes to the Special Relationship, the prime minister has — so far — got his party off to a much better start. Much can be credited to the PM’s decision to go for dinner with the then-Republican candidate Trump in September last year. Bringing along foreign secretary David Lammy (not so long ago he was calling Trump a “neo-Nazi-sympathizing sociopath”). But the pair decided to make friends with Trump before they knew if he’d win the election. 

As always with Trump, a little flattery can go a long way. While the president hasn’t had much to say about Starmer, the comments have been relatively positive — relative, that is, to his broader comments about other leaders and the European bloc. Recognizing in Starmer another election-winner, the prime minister has so far gone unscathed by Trump. 

This, of course, could change in a matter of hours, when the pair are together and in front of the press. Starmer will be hoping the optics paint them as equals — in leadership, anyway — in a way Emmanuel Macron failed to do so when he appeared with the American president earlier in the week.

But for their disagreements on Ukraine, Starmer already seems to be positioning himself for a relatively easy win with Trump. The prime minister’s call for the US to provide “security guarantees” looks more like jumping on the bandwagon at this point than a new, bold strategy on the conflict. It is expected that Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky could be signing a rare-earth deal just as Starmer is leaving the US, which is expected to provide such a guarantee. 

It also helps that Starmer has now pledged to get the UK’s defense spending to 2.5 percent of GDP. It’s far off Trump’s demand of 5 percent. But the acceptance of Trump’s principle — that Europe should pay more for its own security — will again push the UK down further on Trump’s wrath list, especially as he gears up more to make other countries pay their share.

These strategies increase Starmer’s odds that he will come out of the White House in one piece. But it does not solve any fundamental divisions that could soon appear between Britain and the US’s position on Ukraine, were Trump to fail to secure a peace deal and actually start to pull funding.