For Labour in government, these have been days of dislocation and soul-searching. Absorbing a right-wing triumph on the scale of Donald Trump takes time. In the first instances, the British government has swivelled, naturally, to the most immediate problems of Ukraine and trade. But those are only the start.
Some argue that Labour needs to think hard about the failure of the Kamala Harris campaign. I disagree. Labour shouldn’t reflect on that at all. The overarching error the Democrats made in their campaign – that grinning, self-delighted, celebrity-invaded carnival of condescension – was the opposite of Labour’s disciplined, dour, drab, always serious, summer campaign. It horrified Labour observers sent to the Democratic convention. No: all that matters is looking ahead to Trump-world.
On both the Russian war and tariffs, work has already been done by a London administration which expected his victory. David Lammy has been instrumental in wooing Maga Republicans, meeting repeatedly with JD Vance.
The assumption is Trump means what he says on tariffs. Much of his appeal to working-class America was his promise to drive up the cost of imports and persuade companies to “reshore”. This is a romantic, nostalgic policy which will also drive up American inflation, but it’s central to Trump’s thinking.
So the British approach, treating Trump as a transactional leader, not an ideologue who just needs to read a bit more Adam Smith, will be based on persuading Trump that he has more to gain than to lose by favouring the UK. Peter Mandelson, again being tipped as US ambassador, is already road-testing the argument on television.
Ukraine is more urgent and still more difficult. Trump’s election is a significant victory for Putin. The idea that the US can be replaced in the medium-term by Britain and France – perhaps, as the Polish prime minister Donald Tusk suggests, in a new three-way treaty – as supporters of Kyiv is fanciful and dangerous.
Trump was always right about the free-riding instincts of European members of Nato. But it’s too late to restart the debate now. Europe is poorly defended and deeply divided. The collapse of the German government and the arrival of a Le Pen presidency in France doesn’t seem far away. Much of the rest of its leadership is irresolute. Even a fundamental change of direction on defence spending this winter would have no practical impact until long after Kyiv’s defeat.
John Healey, the Defence Secretary, made a good start by signing a new industrial and defence agreement with Germany last month. But the official line on delaying any announcement about when Britain might reach 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence is pretty disgraceful. A promise made – in this case in the election manifesto – without any timetable isn’t a promise at all. Yes, of course, on much of the detail, it is right to wait for George Robertson’s Strategic Defence Review. He is shrewd and, as a former defence secretary and former secretary-general of Nato, highly experienced; and, yes, everything needs to be looked at afresh. When Robertson reports in the first half of next year, we must hope he has reviewed missile defence for the UK, our expensive, accident-prone carriers and the grossly bloated procurement bureaucracy that is the Ministry of Defence – and that he takes an Elon Musk-sized scythe to that.
But… however… nevertheless… all this will be taking place alongside a wider departmental spending review (the first since 2021) which will mean the calculations of the Treasury will overshadow the requirements of defence. Time is short. After the Tory years, we have a national defence posture comparable to that of the 1930s before rearmament began. Is a patriotic, confident Labour government really going to do nothing big to turn that around? One cabinet minister muses: “We are going to be pushed much harder on this now.”
I don’t pretend this is easy. Any hit to our trade from US tariffs, combined with a need to find more money for defence, will take a baseball bat to many of Rachel Reeves’ Treasury assumptions. The knock-on effects elsewhere, including for welfare policy, will be severe.
These are the giant undulations from the US already rippling through British politics. On his journey to Baku, Keir Starmer brutally recast his core policy as economic growth and secure borders – a big retreat from the “five missions” which both aligns him more closely to the Trump agenda and recognises a truth spreading through Whitehall: that Labour’s public service reform agenda barely exists. One consequence is likely to be a dramatic cabinet reshuffle, probably in May.
This is a cultural victory for the right too. Because we share a media space with America, we are vulnerable to the changed climate in Washington on – for instance – climate change, and the treatment of illegal migration. Farage-ism is boosted. One senior Starmer ally tells me: “Climate scepticism and scepticism about mass migration are going to become more mainstream simply because they are the views of the most powerful person in the world.”
How will the party, including in parliament, respond? Natural Trump-haters, Labour people will loathe the spectacle of their ministers being polite, even bending the knee, to the great Orange King over the water.
Starmer, as a man who thinks his first duty is to the country and state, will do whatever he believes needs to be done. It won’t make him more popular.
Trump’s victory also means a subtle tilt in the political balance at the top. Inside the government there are effectively three groupings: there are the Starmer loyalists such as Rachel Reeves, Nick Thomas-Symonds and Bridget Phillipson. Then there are the Blairites: Wes Streeting, Pat McFadden, Peter Kyle, Liz Kendall. And there is the moderate left, led by Angela Rayner and Ed Miliband, and encompassing most of the rest of the cabinet.
All these groups intersect and merge – McFadden is both Starmerite and Blairite. But because of the need to deal with Trump’s world-view, the Blairite “realists” are now growing in influence in a way Starmer had not initially planned.
Jonathan Powell, Blair’s right hand throughout his premiership, is back as national security adviser. Liz Lloyd, who first started work for Blair in 1994 when he became opposition leader and stayed on to be deputy chief of staff in his final administration, is back as Starmer’s head of delivery. Mandelson, who friends say is “struggling” between wanting to be Chancellor of Oxford University and Washington ambassador, may yet be back.
Individually, I can easily make the case for each of these appointments, strengthening the Starmer operation at points of potential weakness and bringing in genuine government experience. But take them together and the result is growing anxiety among the soft left and more traditional, domestic-focused ministers.
Starmer doesn’t like factions or “playing politics”, but he now needs a strategy for avoiding splits. That can only be based on going back to electoral basics, thinking harder about the effect of interest rates on family budgets, and finding a border policy that delivers visible change. He also needs to strengthen the centre, and change is coming there, particularly on the communications side.
Trump’s triumph is far more than “noises off”. These are the hardest days yet: ministers talk privately about this being, after all, only a one-term government. There is no route to re-election without people feeling better off and calmer about the country’s security. Starmer is right: everything else comes second.
[See also: The fall of Justin Welby]
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This article appears in the 13 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Trump World