Trump's unpredictability takes UK government into the unknown

6 November 2024, 13:24 | Updated: 6 November 2024, 16:02

It wasn't yet official, but Sir Keir Starmer was straight out of the blocks on Wednesday morning to congratulate President Trump on his imminent victory - as America reeled from an election that turned from being too close to call into an emphatic, definitive and quick win.

President Trump took the Electoral College, the popular vote, and the Senate.

The victory is hugely consequential - not just for a divided America that now has at its helm a president who ran a campaign that played on fear, economic and social insecurity and grievance - but for the UK and Europe too.

The US election has chosen a strongman leader for uncertain times and he enters the White House with a huge mandate. How he chooses to wield that power matters to us all.

For the Labour government, it will be a more trying diplomatic test than would have befallen a Conservative one.

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As Donald Trump noted when he and Sir Keir dined at Trump Tower in September ahead of the election, he and Starmer are not natural bedfellows.

"You're a liberal so we won't always agree," he reportedly told the UK prime minister over dinner. "But we can work together."

Sir Keir, a former human rights lawyer and a part of the sister party to the Democrats, and Donald Trump, a brash, deal-making billionaire businessman, are not an obvious match.

For Donald Trump, relationships matter. He hit it off with Boris Johnson but never really rubbed along with Theresa May.

Sir Keir's approach will be to keep calm and carry on. I'm told the PM is of the view that "it is not about what Trump says but what he does".

He is obviously not the preferred choice of the Labour leadership, but those in Number 10 are pragmatic and have been preparing for the outcome for some months.

"For us, there will always be areas of common interest than transcend party politics, as does the special relationship," one senior figure said.

"Our approach is that it's ultimately for the American people, and they have clearly chosen who they want to be president - and our responsibility is to make the relationship work in the UK national interest.

"That's why the PM took time to have dinner with President Trump in September - and that was a very successful evening. It's fortuitous to have that time so we are not starting from scratch."

There have already been moments of possible tension that the prime minister has brushed off as inconsequential, aware that it is unwise to poke the bear.

When, on our way to the Commonwealth summit in Samoa, Trump's election team filed a complaint against Labour, accusing it of "blatant foreign interference" in the US election in aid of the Harris campaign.

This came after media reports about contact between Number 10 operatives and the Harris team and apparent volunteering efforts.

Sir Keir calmly brushed aside concerns and refused to rise to the bait - despite some of his most senior staff being personally targeted in the Trump complaint.

Meanwhile, David Lammy, the foreign secretary, has spent a good portion of his time in recent months with Republicans - with his supporters insisting the ground work has "paid off".

"They know him now and he has good relations with JD Vance," one supporter said.

I'm also told that past sharp criticisms of President Trump by Mr Lammy - he once called Trump a "neo-Nazi sociopath" - are long forgotten.

"He won't hold a grudge if you treat him with respect when he's in office," insisted one insider.

The coming months will see whether that proves true, but government insiders point out to me that the reason Sir Keir took Mr Lammy to the Trump dinner in New York was to test the water.

"It was a successful evening. If there had been an issue, President Trump would have said something," one said.

Sir Keir ever pragmatic, the mood more widely in government was pretty flat on Wednesday, as London woke up to the Trump win.

Many Labour staffers had gone over to support the Harris campaign, other members of the Starmer team had attended the Democratic convention in a time-honoured tradition of these two sister parties.

This was a government that had wanted a Democrat win.

As one insider said to me on Wednesday morning: "I hoped right up to the last moment that he wouldn't win. But he has and here we are."

There is plenty of anxiety in the UK about what Trump 2.0 might mean.

For starters, he has threatened across-the-board trade tariffs on all trading partners of 10% to 20%, while floating special treatment for the US's chief rival China, with tariffs of up to 60%.

Blanket tariffs would hit billions of pounds of UK automotive, pharmaceutical and liquor exports.

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One senior government figure told me they have been wargaming the scenarios but did not know how the coming months would play out, noting the political win for Trump at home could make him bolder still.

"We are very well prepared, but you have to accept unpredictability is a key feature of Trump," the senior figure said.

"The UK does not have a trade deficit on goods with the US, so we might not be top of his hit list, but a clean sweep like this [politically] probably makes him feel he has been totally validated."

Those scenarios range from full-blown trade wars to more mildly protectionist measures, which the UK has already lived with under the Biden Administration's Inflation Reduction Act - which was designed to drive businesses to the US through hundreds of billions of tax incentives.

"What he says in the heat of the campaign and what actually happens might differ. We have a window of opportunity during the transition [Trump will be inaugurated on 20 January] to argue that tariffs will have a huge impact on the US too," the senior figure said.

"It's hard to say what it's going to mean for us now. There will be trade implications, but it's not clear whether they will be flat tariffs that spark a trade war with China in which we all feel the pain or mildly protectionist stuff, which the US has been doing for years.

"In the nightmare trade scenario of huge tariffs... if this happens, this is going to make Brexit feel like a papercut."