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WASHINGTON — “These visits are like a first date,” said one senior U.K. official, as they nervously awaited Keir Starmer’s first White House talks with Donald Trump. “You go and just hope you might get married someday.”
Not yet — but the U.K. prime minister and U.S. president could’ve had people fooled. The sidelong smiles and gold curtains; even aides split into his-and-his blocks at their press conference. Vice President JD Vance sat across the aisle from Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
Trump praised Starmer’s “beautiful accent” and dangled the prospect of “very good” trade deal. Starmer literally spoke Trump’s language, saying of his second U.K. state visit: “This has never happened before. It’s so incredible. It will be historic.” The deeply private PM even managed a laugh when the president, unprompted, lavished praise on his “beautiful, great” wife.
Beyond the bromance, however, Trump left many crucial unanswered questions — not least whether the U.S. will give the concrete security guarantees Britain wants for a postwar Ukraine, beyond having U.S. workers there as part of a minerals deal.
These would be refocusing Friday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House to sign that deal. They will again on Sunday when Starmer convenes European leaders including Zelenskyy in London.
Yet the bonhomie was never guaranteed from the unpredictable Trump, whose allies including Elon Musk have deep misgivings about center-left lawyer Starmer. It may unravel, but is being seen — for now — as a PR victory in No. 10. Starmer and his aides were smiling on the red-eye flight home; the undemonstrative PM even managed a thumbs-up.
POLITICO spoke to half a dozen U.K. government officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive government matters. They gave a picture of months of quiet, grinding preparation, designed to ensure that Starmer — struggling in the polls against Nigel Farage’s right-wing Reform UK — did not become another victim of a White House humiliation.
Laying the ground
In a sense, the preparations began about a year ago, when Lammy — then shadow foreign secretary with decades of personal ties with Democrats — took it upon himself to reach out across the aisle to Republicans. He met Vance, and told friends he believed the then-Ohio senator may become Trump’s running mate. Lammy studied the example of the late Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister who managed to get pally with Trump in his first term and also achieve a trade deal.
But many of the hard yards were done by the British embassy in Washington under recently departed Ambassador Karen Pierce. Senay Bulbul, a political counsellor at the embassy, built close links to MAGA Republicans and was present for the White House meetings on Thursday.
Apolitical Pierce left a month ago, replaced by the smooth-talking Peter Mandelson, a former minister under Labour ex-PM Tony Blair. He was an unlikely choice given his Europhile tendencies and calls for more engagement with China.
If there was disquiet among the Republicans sipping sparkling rosé under the crystal chandeliers at Mandelson’s lavish residence Wednesday, they kept it to themselves.
Starmer earned a laugh by describing Mandelson as the man some people “love to hate.” Mandelson introduced the PM to new FBI Director Kash Patel, who has railed against the “deep state.” Patel joked about bringing his family to visit and having them put up in the embassy.
More fundamental was the cultural divide between Trump acolytes and Starmer’s aides. The PM’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney attended the Democratic National Convention last summer and set up the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which is now in a long and bitter battle with Musk.
As if to atone, McSweeney — a ruthless campaign strategist who has targeted many of the same blue-collar voters as Trump — visited Trump’s incoming chief of staff Susie Wiles in December. Their talks were secret, but the message seemed clear in Thursday’s press conference, after a lunch where McSweeney was at the table.
Trump flashed a satisfied smile as Starmer said: “It’s no secret we’re from different political traditions, but there’s a lot that we have in common. We believe it’s not taking part that counts. What counts is winning.”
Final countdown
The countdown began in earnest around two weeks ago, when Downing Street — after some weeks of trying — was given a provisional date for Starmer’s visit.
Some of Starmer’s most senior aides visited Washington, in the run-up to lay the ground. They included his Director of Communications Matthew Doyle, who visited last week.
Foreign Secretary Lammy then landed on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, Lammy held a 45-minute meeting in the State Department with Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine. He and aides established that the U.S. red line was having American troops on the ground in Ukraine — so Britain made a concerted effort to stress it was never what it had wanted.
“Anybody who’s got anybody” was tapping up U.S. contacts, a second U.K. official said. Their goal was to listen; to work out what the White House wanted, rather than pressing Starmer’s view. It wasn’t always easy.
“A lot of them wake up in the morning just waiting for what [Trump] is going to say today,” said the first official quoted above.
“It’s very difficult to read anything that’s going on at the top of the administration unless you have a top line to the president,” added the second official. “So there’s no point us pushing — we can articulate our argument, underline our position, but we were never going to be going into meetings with demands or pressure.”
A third U.K. official said the final flurry of pre-meetings was “driven by the prime minister.” They added: “He has been focused on this since we got the date confirmed. [It is] the sort of attention to detail in the planning that you would associate with him and which meant he could make the most of the visit.”
PM locked down
Starmer woke on the day of the meeting to U.S. newspapers that had relegated his presence to small stories in the foreign section. A mooted morning meeting with members of Congress was left on the shelf, after they became bogged down in U.S. domestic politics.
But that gave the PM — a meticulous preparer who used to watch back his own answers in the Commons and hit pause for notes — more time to swot up. He left Blair House opposite the White House and went to the British Embassy, where he spent more than three hours in briefings, including in a secure room. There he downloaded the thinking of aides and Lammy on what the U.S. had been saying.
Part of the display at the White House was a careful act. Process-obsessed lawyer Starmer is not given to hyperbole, yet leaned into it to describe Trump’s state visit. He detests theatrics, yet whipped a letter from King Charles III — inviting Trump to that state visit — out of his jacket pocket. He does not go in for back-slapping bonhomie, yet put his hand on the president’s arm.
Officials had strongly suggested he would not mirror the bromance approach of French President Emmanuel Macron, who swept in with a date before Starmer’s on Monday and repeatedly touched Trump, because it was not his style. In the end, that was exactly what Starmer did.
Don’t poke the bear
Unlike many European counterparts, the watchword of Starmer’s entire approach to Trump has been: you catch more with honey.
Just days before the visit, Starmer announced a hike in Britain’s defense spending — by cutting the overseas aid budget — in a move that seemed explicitly designed to appeal to Trump.
One minister said Britain was being “as amenable as we possibly can” in the name of pragmatism, given so much of Britain’s economic and national security is intertwined with the U.S. They added: “Nobody wants to say anything that’s going to embarrass him or be used against us collectively.”
As a backlash mounted over Trump’s comments on Ukraine, including failing to blame Russia for the war, there was some fear in Whitehall that the president wouldn’t even take part in Monday’s call of G7 leaders.
There was cause for optimism, though. Officials were noting that some of the most extreme comments by Trump allies — such as U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth casting doubt on the role of NATO — were not matched by comments they had made later or in private.
Yet despite Starmer and Lammy enjoying a two-hour chicken dinner with Trump in September, there were genuine worries that the PM would end up being belittled like leaders before him.
“We needed to make sure we were coming with a unified message,” the second official quoted above said. “You don’t want to be Angela Merkel, do you, or indeed Theresa May?”
Storm ahead
There is still time for Starmer to become either of them.
He left the White House under dark clouds — literally — and unanswered questions. Aides later clarified that despite Trump speaking of a trade deal, they were not prioritizing a full-fat free-trade agreement, long coveted in London after Brexit.
Starmer, on the flight to Washington, warned Russian President Vladimir Putin could “come again” for Ukraine if there is an insufficient backstop. When he met Trump, the president said the exact opposite.
Starmer also nudged back at Trump’s suggestion that by striking a minerals deal with Ukraine, he was — by default — providing a security guarantee for European peacekeeping troops in future. Starmer had been pushing for U.S. aerial intelligence, and air cover should Russia attack.
In an interview with NBC after his White House visit, Starmer said he could “see the value” in Trump’s approach to minerals — but it would form merely “at least one element of any security guarantee.” At talks with European leaders on Sunday, he will want more.
All this is linked to the fundamental question of a United States that is moving its eye away from Europe, regardless of how friendly Trump decides to be.
John Spellar, a Labour peer and former defense minister under Tony Blair, said the U.S. has said “for ages” that its focus is moving away and “Europe has unfortunately not taken this seriously.” He added: “The U.S., as it shifts its focus to the Pacific, has made clear it cannot be Europe’s first responder. And by the way, this would be inevitable under an administration from either party.”
Starmer will be celebrating this meeting as a successful one. But as they say; you’re only as good as your last meeting.
