{"id":169087,"date":"2024-11-06T09:42:19","date_gmt":"2024-11-06T09:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/06\/what-a-donald-trump-victory-means-for-the-uk\/"},"modified":"2024-11-06T09:42:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T09:42:20","slug":"what-a-donald-trump-victory-means-for-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/06\/what-a-donald-trump-victory-means-for-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"What a Donald Trump victory means for the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Donald Trump declares victory in the US presidential race, this result would represent the more complicated outcome for the UK government.<\/p>\n

There’s one big reason for this: Trump’s wild unpredictability.<\/p>\n

Right now, in foreign ministries around the world, including in London, hypothetical game plans for this scenario are becoming the real deal.<\/p>\n

The prep has been done. But the prep may only count for so much.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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How will Sir Keir Starmer, the former north London human rights lawyer, gel with the brash New York billionaire?<\/p>\n

The omens, in terms of character compatibility, don\u2019t look instantly great.<\/p>\n

What role could another brash billionaire, Elon Musk, play in a Trump administration \u2013 after his summer of goading the Labour government on X?<\/a><\/p>\n

It looks like we are in for another rollercoaster ride when it comes to relations with Washington.<\/p>\n

We have been here before \u2013 as I wrote about last week<\/a> when reflecting on Theresa May\u2019s experiences as prime minister during the first Trump term.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Within government here, two recent diplomatic successes with Team Trump are pointed to.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the dinner the prime minister and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy had with Trump at Trump Tower in New York in September.<\/a><\/p>\n

Trump, sources say, re-arranged his schedule to find time to meet Starmer and Lammy, which was seen as a \u201cgood gesture\u201d with the soon to be president.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the prime minister managed an early call with Donald Trump shortly after he survived an assassination attempt.<\/p>\n

Both opportunities to talk to Trump are put down to an impressive diplomatic operation at the British Embassy in Washington \u2013 led by the ambassador Dame Karen Pierce.<\/p>\n

Those close to the foreign secretary say he has also been putting in the leg work for months \u2013 including before the election \u2013 to get to know and to understand Donald Trump and those around him.<\/p>\n

On a visit to Washington DC in May, he pointed out in a speech that it was his seventh visit to the US capital in three and a half years.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been to the United States more times than I\u2019ve been to France. I\u2019ve lived in America, I\u2019ve studied in America, I\u2019ve got family in America. My father is buried in Texas,\u201d he told an audience at the Hudson Institute.<\/a> <\/p>\n

He described Trump as \u201coften misunderstood,\u201d referred to the Vice President Elect JD Vance as \u201cmy friend\u201d and added \u201cI totally get the agenda\u2026that drives America First,\u201d a reference to the phrase<\/a> Trump used in his Inauguration Speech in January 2017 to spell out that \u201cevery decision\u2026will be made to benefit American workers and American families.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Quite the outreach and attempt to be seen to understand Donald Trump and his success, from a man who once called him<\/a> a \u201ctyrant in a toupee”.<\/p>\n

But privately there is a recognition things aren\u2019t likely to be smooth.<\/p>\n

Take the recent row<\/a> about alleged interference by the Labour Party in the US election after an injudicious social media post by a Labour staffer.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just shows you he doesn\u2019t give a stuff about his relationship with the UK,\u201d one former diplomat told me. <\/p>\n

So prepare for the opposite of smooth \u2013 bumpy, noisy and transactional \u2013 finding issues where they can do a deal with Trump, who reveres his capacity as a deal maker.<\/p>\n

For this reason, we have already seen Lammy attempt to set out an understanding about Donald Trump\u2019s instincts.<\/p>\n

An understanding that Europe has to pay more to fund its own defence.<\/p>\n

An understanding that America\u2019s attention is increasingly on Asia, not least because, as Lammy has put it, \u201cthe Chinese navy is now the largest in the world and Chinese shipbuilding capacity 230 times larger than the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

And an understanding that, bluntly, Europe cares more about Ukraine than the United States does.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want America to support Kyiv as much as it can, but the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats shouldn\u2019t be exaggerated,\u201d is how one Whitehall source put it.<\/p>\n

Up to a point: there will be grave concerns in European capitals and beyond that this result could leave Ukraine imperilled.<\/p>\n

And that is on top of the prospect of sky-high import taxes, or tariffs, let alone the minute by minute verbal explosions on social media.<\/p>\n

So, the mitigations for this moment have continued apace: the foreign secretary recently met Trump\u2019s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.<\/p>\n

The government has also been cultivating relationships with Robert O\u2019Brien, who was national security adviser in Donald Trump\u2019s first term and Elbridge Colby, who some think could be his next national security adviser.<\/a><\/p>\n

But we are soon likely to find out to what extent any of this preparatory work counts for anything.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters As Donald Trump declares victory in the US presidential race, this result would represent the more complicated outcome for the UK government. There’s one big reason for this: Trump’s wild unpredictability. Right now, in foreign ministries around the world, including in London, hypothetical game plans for this scenario are becoming the real deal. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":169088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/bbcx\/grey-placeholder.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[51,19138,52,1477],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169087"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":169089,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169087\/revisions\/169089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/169088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}