On the flight over to Washington DC last week it was obvious that Sir Keir Starmer and his team had a clear strategy for the prime minister’s meeting with Donald Trump.
They rightly calculated that Trump is possibly the biggest political egotist on the planet, so they decided to do everything they could to massage his ego.
The flourish with the letter from the King offering a “historic, unprecedented” second state visit; the supine deference; thanking him for “changing the conversation on Ukraine”; all of it was part of an attempt to schmooze Trump into doing what was necessary on Ukraine, as well as not imposing tariffs.
As an emotionally exhausted PM and his team flew away from Andrews military airbase in DC on Thursday night they had genuine cause for optimism that it had all worked and Starmer had pulled off a masterstroke.
But there were three major flaws in the plan. First, Trump is utterly unpredictable; second, there were other egos at play in this diplo-drama; third, and most importantly, they refused to even consider the idea that Trump would be utterly unacceptable.
On this last point, a senior UK diplomat gave British journalists accompanying the prime minister a briefing ahead of Starmer’s White House meeting. It was clear from that briefing that there was no scenario in which the UK was planning for where Trump and Zelensky did not sign the minerals deal 24 hours later.
It was all “a game changing week” with the minerals deal and then everything would be largely in place with the London conference hosted by the PM on Sunday.
We all know now how that went. After the awful Oval Office scenes which saw Zelensky leave the White House in a hurry and no deal signed Starmer and others had to go into emergency planning.
But even by Sunday Starmer was optimistic that he could bring Zelensky and Trump back to the table in his press conference after his summit.
By Monday MPs from both sides of the House (with the exception of Nigel Farage) were congratulating the prime minister on being an international leader and all-round brilliant diplomat.
But once again Starmer was caught out. He had called Trump and was telling the House that the US was still a “reliable partner”, ready to engage in the peace deal and was completely dismissive of claims made that Trump would pull military aid to Ukraine.
But even before he had sat down from his Commons statement Trump was posting on Truth Social, attacking on Zelensky and making a contemptuous sideswipe at Starmer and other European leaders.
Then overnight he actually did cancel the military aid to Ukraine as had been widely predicted everywhere except apparently Downing Street.
Starmer cannot be blamed for the volatility of the US president or his hard-headed vice president JD Vance. But nevertheless as things stand, his diplomatic strategy on Ukraine has been left in tatters by the White House and he has the added problem that his ambassador in the US Lord Mandelson appears to be freelancing on TV in support of Trump more than UK policy.
