This is not the US election result that the Labour Party wanted – but it is the one that it prepared for. Victory for Kamala Harris would have heralded a new phase of transatlantic centre-left cooperation. But the threat of Donald Trump’s political rebirth loomed far larger.
Mindful of this, Keir Starmer and his team sought to insulate themselves from the dangers. Long before becoming prime minister, Starmer remained studiously neutral on the US election and attempted to build bridges with Republicans. This culminated in the two-hour dinner that he held with Trump in New York in September (Starmer and Harris never met) – one deemed by both sides to have gone well.
Accompanying Starmer was David Lammy who, as a student of US politics, long believed a Trump victory was the most likely outcome. Despite his excoriating past tweets on the president-elect, the pair enjoyed an easy rapport. It is no accident that Lammy has spent the last two years meeting senior Republicans: JD Vance (before he became Trump’s vice-presidential nominee), former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former national security adviser Robert O’Brien.
“It’s not 2016 when the Conservatives were caught without connections to Trump World, without detailed policy work and without a strategy,” said a Lammy ally. The UK’s ambassador, Karen Pierce, is credited with making the British embassy more “Trump-proof” than its French and German counterparts. Foreign Office officials hope that Trump’s personal ties to Britain – his mother was Scottish – and his instinctive affection for the country and the royal family will further smooth relations.
But Trump’s presidency could still prove nightmarish for Labour. He has vowed to impose tariffs of up to 20 per cent on UK and European exports – a daunting prospect given already grim growth forecasts. “The UK is a small, open economy and would be one of the countries most affected,” Ahmet Kaya of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research has warned. GDP, it forecasts, would be 0.7 percentage points lower in the first two years, while inflation and interest rates would be higher.
In other words, Starmer’s government will have less money to spend – at just the moment it needs more. Trump’s isolationist foreign policy will intensify pressure on the UK to spend significantly more on defence (Labour has yet to commit to a date for meeting its 2.5 per cent pledge). His ambivalence towards Nato will force greater European co-operation even without the reopening of the Brexit question.
Meanwhile, expect party strategists to study the US election result and draw relevant lessons. Back in July, Morgan McSweeney, No 10’s chief of staff, shared an essay on “The Death of ‘Deliverism’” from Democracy journal. That analysis proved prescient: though Joe Biden was often hailed as the best domestic president since LBJ or even FDR, his record counted for little as inflation eroded voters’ living standards and illegal immigration rose. It will not be enough, as Labour knows, for the party to point to rising lines on graphs – voters will need to feel better off. In an era of anti-incumbency, Starmer has been sent a warning from afar.
[See also: Andrew Marr: Trump’s victory is a cataclysm]
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
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