Britain’s left-wing Prime Minister says he wants it both ways on Europe and the United States as he sets a course towards bringing the UK well and truly back to the orbit of Brussels while courting the Trump White House.
The United States cannot expect the United Kingdom to be a steadfast ally when it comes to managing the European Union — a particularly important message as the incoming Trump White House looks to protect domestic jobs and industry with tariffs — Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer telegraphed this week in a major policy speech. Making clear he wanted to play both sides, Starmer asserted his belief that Britain could fundamentally only be Atlanticist or tied to Brussels as a false dichotomy.
He said in his Mansion House speech:
Against the backdrop of these dangerous times. The idea that we must choose between our allies. That somehow we’re with either America or Europe is plain wrong. I reject it utterly. Attlee did not choose between allies. Churchill did not choose. The national interest demands that we work with both.
This is a matter of “hard-headed realism” he said, while praising President Trump as “gracious” and saying the UK would be investing “more deeply than ever in this transatlantic bond”. Yet the Prime Minister’s own revealed preference appears to contradict this mooted geopolitical balancing act, suggesting the left-wing politician is in fact far more invested in rolling back Brexit by bringing the country back into the orbit of Brussels.
The Times of London, the British newspaper of record, notes Starmer is launching what they call a “charm offensive” on the European Union in the coming months, with the British Finance Minister to attend an EU finance minister group meeting for first time since Brexit, a UK-EU summit, and Starmer himself joining Euro leader security talks.
This is hoped to kick start work on a new UK-EU security pact, it is stated, and will include discussions on European defence “in the light of Donald Trump’s election”, which very much gives the impression of being a coping strategy for European globalists to survive the Trump Presidency, rather than a sincere leaning into it for common benefit.
Once again the United Kingdom appears to be on course to squander the rare opportunity of a truly Anglophile President in the White House, as it did in the last Trump administration when Prime Minister Theresa May and her civil servants wasted the chance for a UK-US trade deal, and apparently mainly out of social embarrassment.
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