Trump’s admiration for royals gives PM a card to play

Donald Trump’s admiration for the British royal family gives Sir Keir Starmer a unique card to play, and he has played it with a ruthless absence of modesty. From the moment the prime minister produced the King’s invitation from his jacket pocket in the Oval Office, Operation Flatter Trump has been in top gear.

So far, it has been a success, in that Sir Keir has secured some relief from the tariffs originally proposed by the president, and a better deal for the United Kingdom than most other countries have been able to achieve. This may not be a great advance, but it does mean that the damage from a foolish and counterproductive policy has been mitigated, according to the Independent.

Nor did the trade deal turn out to be quite as advantageous to Britain as was claimed at the time, with British steel exports still facing 25 per cent tariffs — higher than the zero tariff originally mooted, even if still lower than the 50 per cent applied to most other countries.

It may be that President Trump intends to help Sir Keir by agreeing to what the British thought was agreed in May. “They want to see if they can refine the trade deal a little bit,” he said on the plane over the Atlantic. “I’m into helping them. They’d like to see if they could get a little bit better deal. So, we’ll talk to them.”

It may be that the briefing from British sources that an agreement on steel and aluminium has been shelved was crude expectation management, and the president will allow Sir Keir to announce some good news for what is left of Britain’s metal industries.

We must hope so. It will be awkward for the King and embarrassing for Sir Keir if Britain gets nothing out of the state visit beyond some video clips and a chance to rehearse royal protocol.

Not that such an outcome will be permitted. A series of “tech prosperity deals” have already been trailed, although we are unlikely to see the small print until long after President Trump has returned to the US. It is not clear, for example, what price Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, has paid to secure pledges of investment in the UK, but we should be grateful that Mr Trump’s zero-sum rhetoric is belied in practice by an understanding of the mutual benefit of trade.

Sir Keir has also, by a combination of massaging President Trump’s ego and the rallying of European allies in the “coalition of the willing”, helped to pull the US administration back from abandoning the Ukrainian people in their brave struggle against Vladimir Putin’s aggression.

Again, this state visit is a chance to reinforce President Trump’s self-image as a strong leader who admires Britain, and who therefore should have some feeling for the history of an alliance built on the defence of freedom. If King Charles is tactful enough not to press the president on his own favoured cause of the environment, we can be sure that he will at least make the case for the defence of Ukraine.

If that is all that this visit helps to underwrite, it will have been worthwhile. It is a mark of the seriousness of purpose of this Labour government that it is able to put aside its differences with Mr Trump in the national interest. The petulant refusal of Sir Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, to attend the state dinner is the prerogative of an opposition politician, but it is an empty gesture nonetheless.

Everyone in Britain has a right to their view of Mr Trump, and The Independent regards him as dangerous to democracy, a threat to the world economy, and a potential appeaser of Putin. But Sir Keir has a duty to the British people that requires him not to indulge in gesture politics, or to give voice to the popular disapproval of the president.

The prime minister will wisely avoid discussion of a long list of subjects, including Jeffrey Epstein, JD Vance’s views on free speech in Britain, and Yvette Cooper’s old views about Mr Trump’s attitude to women. But if Sir Keir can use this state visit to protect Britain’s economic interests, and the ability of the Ukrainians to resist their invader, the royal family will have been a card worth playing.