Everyone knows that scene in Love Actually. The one where Prime Minister Hugh Grant (no one can remember the character’s actual name), having been pushed around by the US President – who’s popped over just weeks after the pre-Christmas General Election – finally gets up the courage to stand up for Britain. (Let’s just forget for a moment that the catalyst for this show of strength is the President sexually harassing the PM’s assistant-turned-love-interest.)
“We may be a small country, but we’re a great one, too,” he tells the press conference, before listing all the things that Britain can be proud of (Shakespeare, Churchill, David Beckham etc.) and promising a rebuke to bullying America.
It’s an iconic cinematic moment. I was in the US when the film came out in 2003, and Grant’s performance was enough to sway an entire cinema of Americans (whom you might presume would be on the President’s side) into spontaneous applause on behalf of this fictional British Prime Minister.
Were Keir Starmer to try that on his trip to Washington this week, it is unlikely he’d get such a reception from an American audience. The real-life Prime Minister faces the mother of all balancing acts as he attempts to convince Donald Trump to take European security seriously again and stop playing directly into the hands of Vladimir Putin – all without antagonising the notoriously thin-skinned occupant of the White House by, for example, correcting him on which country started the Russia-Ukraine war by invading the other. The government’s position is that the key thing is to engage Trump – whether through bargaining, flattery or persuading him it is in his (and America’s) interests. That means not getting caught up in an argument about the accuracy of Trump’s accusation that Starmer and Macron “haven’t done anything” to end the war.
This is the pragmatic strategy. The Love Actually approach plays beautifully on screen, but doesn’t actually help you if what you want is an American “backstop” to ensure Russia doesn’t try the whole invading-a-sovereign-European-country trick again. Given the geopolitical stakes, you can absolutely see why Starmer wants to play this one cautiously.
For the other parties, though, the calculation is different. Few issues cut across party divides like public sentiment when it comes to Trump and Ukraine.
Trump is not a popular political figure in the UK. The latest YouGov poll shows 73 per cent of all Brits have an unfavourable view of the US President – and the fieldwork for that was done on 16-17 February, before Trump decided to blame Ukraine for starting the war. In a snap poll after those comments, on 20 February, only one in five Brits said maintaining good relations with the US was more important than supporting Ukraine, with almost half taking the opposite view.
For both these polls, the political landscape is remarkably united. Labour and Liberal Democrat voters are the most supportive of Ukraine compared to the US, but twice as many Tories thought standing with Ukraine mattered more than UK-US relations. And while a smaller proportion of Conservative voters (68 per cent) have an unfavourable view of the US President than their fervently anti-Trump Labour (90 per cent) and Lib Dem (91 per cent) counterparts, it’s still a sizeable majority.
The outliers are Reform supporters, of whom 47 per cent think the UK should prioritise US relations over Ukraine, and 66 per cent feel favourably about Trump (an almost exact reversal of the figures for Tory voters). Reform voters are, however, far more likely to have a positive view of Zelenksy (49 per cent favourable to 37 per cent unfavourable) than they are to Putin (12 per cent favourable to 80 per cent unfavourable).
All this suggests that there are real domestic dividends to be gained for politicians that stand up to Trump. Which is why the reactions to Trump calling Zelensky a “dictator” are so interesting.
Starmer’s response came in the form of call in which he “expressed his support for President Zelensky as Ukraine’s democratically elected leader and said that it was perfectly reasonable to suspend elections during war time” (according to the official statement). That’s the balancing act in full flow: pushing back against Trump’s (nonsensical) narrative without rebuking him directly.
Kemi Badenoch has no such restraints (one reason it was strange to see her praise Trump and neglect to mention Ukraine at all in her big speech last week about the threats to Western civilisation). After all, she’s not the one heading to Washington. Still, she still tried to hedge, saying Zelenksy was not a dictator but that “President Trump is right that Europe needs to pull its weight.” She also urged Starmer to “get on a plane to Washington and show some leadership” – odd, since the PM’s trip was already announced for this week and it’s unclear what Badenoch thinks British “leadership” should look like. Priti Patel struck a more unifying tone in the House of Commons on Monday afternoon when responding to David Lammy’s statement on Ukraine, but given Boris Johnson has been out and about trying to explain away Trump’s intervention as a shock tactic, it’s hard to work out where exactly the Conservatives are on all this.
As for Nigel Farage, caught between his self-professed proximity to the Trump project and the need for his party to appeal across the electorate, hedged even more, waiting a day before pushing back on the “dictator” comment and doing the best he could to excuse it. We’ll see how that one plays out.
This cedes the robustly anti-Trump ground to Ed Davey, whose rebuttal was unequivocal: “Calling Zelensky a ‘Dictator’ must be where the line is drawn. It is my sincere hope that the whole political spectrum in the United Kingdom will speak with one voice in opposition to Trump’s lies.” There’s your Love Actually moment (less dramatic for being posted on social media, but still.)
The Lib Dems are busy carving out a space in the political landscape as the party best placed to capitalise on the British public’s horror at what’s been going on across the Atlantic. It’s too early to say if this is working (although more Labour voters are deserting for the Lib Dems than Reform), but a new poll out yesterday, this one by More In Common, asked how well or poorly people thought political leaders were responding to the war in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Zelensky’s score was net 35 per cent, while Trump’s was net minus 37 per cent. All UK party leaders were in negative territory, with Starmer on net minus 9 per cent, Badenoch on minus 15 per cent, and Farage on minus 16 per cent. Ed Davey came out top on minus 4 per cent. (The poll also found a resounding 68 per cent of Brits do not think Zelensky is a dictator – and quite right too.)
Keep an eye on this. UK politicians face four whole years of waking up to see what grenade Trump has chucked into the geopolitical sphere overnight. The strains of realpolitik tie Labour’s hands to some extent – if Trump gets triggered, Starmer will be the one facing the consequences when the US imposes punitive tariffs on copies of Shakespeare and David Beckham merchandise. Meanwhile, the Tories’ attempt to fend off Reform and flirtation with the US right makes it hard for them to meet the British public where they actually are on this issue. Davey is the one who has the most to gain – and, crucially, little to lose – from channelling his inner Hugh Grant.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: What could Starmer get out of Trump on Russia?]
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