Flattery and pragmatism: UK plan to stay on Trump’s good side

LONDON: With its flattering rhetoric, leniency in responding to US trade threats and alignment with Washington this week at a summit on artificial intelligence, the United Kingdom has signalled a willingness to take President Donald Trump’s side over Europe.

“The UK has no closer ally than America,” Britain’s newly appointed ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, said on Tuesday, in a video overflowing with superlatives posted on Elon Musk’s X platform.

The Labour party grandee, formerly a European commissioner, had told the BBC on Monday that Britain has “to respect and understand what drives (Trump), what his mandate is to do, and how his allies need to adjust sometimes”.

David Lammy, Britain’s top diplomat, also lavished praise on Trump last month, saying he displayed “incredible grace and generosity” and was “very funny, very friendly, very warm” during their meeting last September.

The comments were somewhat more complimentary than previous remarks by Lammy in which he called Trump a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. The conciliatory tone is “likely to be calculated at keeping the UK out of Trump’s crosshairs when it comes to tariffs and any other forms of aggressive US foreign policy,” said Michael Plouffe, an associate professor at UCL university in London.

Jonathan Portes, an economist at King’s College London, said “the UK, as usual, is trying to have its cake and eat it”. “This is perfectly rational and sensible,” he added. “It is hoping to avoid the worst excesses of Trump at the same time as it pursues its rapprochement with the EU.”

‘Makes sense’

The European Union remains by far Britain’s largest trading partner, but London has dreamt of a trade agreement with Washington, which Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently called for, since leaving the bloc.

Faced with the frenetic start to Trump’s presidency and his unpredictable diplomatic manoeuvrings, Starmer has in recent days made strategic choices to distance himself from the Europeans.

There is no question of Britain joining the EU’s countermeasures promised on Tuesday in response to Trump’s newly announced 25-per cent customs duties on steel and aluminium, which the United States will impose from March 12. Britain instead says that it is “engaging” with the United States on the details of the tariffs.

“What British industry needs and deserves is not a knee-jerk reaction but a cool and clear-headed sense of the UK’s national interest based on a full assessment of all the implications of the US’s actions,” said British trade minister Douglas Alexander.

London also sided against the EU on the crucial issue of artificial intelligence, teaming up with the United States in refusing to sign the final declaration of the AI summit in Paris on Tuesday.

“We felt the declaration didn´t provide enough practical clarity on global governance, nor sufficiently address harder questions around national security and the challenge AI poses to it,” said a British government spokesperson.

This “cautious approach to the US” over AI is aligned with Starmer’s promise to make the Britain a world leader in the sector, said Plouffe. It also “makes sense” that Starmer would avoid “antagonism with the state that is home to three of the leading AI providers”, he added.

“This may win some favour with Trump” at a time when the digital giants, who have become the Republican’s close allies, are locked in regulatory disputes with the EU. “I think he’s done a very good job thus far,” Trump said of Starmer in late January. “I like him a lot.”

But can the British strategy work in the long term? “That depends on just how confrontational Trump is with the EU and whether he wants to try to lever the UK away from the EU,” Portes said. “Since nobody -- including him -- knows what he’s going to do, I certainly don’t,” he added.