For a man who chooses his words so carefully, there is no doubt that Keir Starmer’s shift in tone towards Donald Trump at prime minister’s questions was intentional.
Since the turn of the year, as the US president has shown his imperialist ambition, the prime minister’s softly-softly approach to his unpredictable friend in the White House has come under increased strain.
His delicately calibrated position – doing diplomacy in private and building a close relationship in the hope of having greater influence – blew up spectacularly on Saturday, when Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on European allies opposed to the US taking over Greenland.
Within hours Starmer responded: “Applying tariffs on allies for pursuing the collective security of Nato allies is completely wrong.” Apart from a disagreement with Trump over his claim that London wanted sharia law, it is the first time the prime minister has called him out so forcefully.
On Monday, at a hastily arranged press conference in Downing Street, Starmer insisted that he still hoped to find a “pragmatic, sensible and sustained” route through the latest crisis – and would prefer “calm discussion” to “gesture politics” that could damage the transatlantic relationship.
Yet there was also a subtle toughening of his message: that US tariffs would damage the British economy and were “in no one’s interests” – while he also (just about) kept the threat of retaliatory tariffs on the table. It was not quite the quiet appeasement his most vociferous critics claim.
“Keir is usually very English about it all: polite, civil, plain-speaking, not prone to drama. In the context of all that, he was actually very robust and that will have been noted in Washington,” one cabinet minister observed shortly after.
“There may well come a point where Keir has to make a judgment call that we need a more obvious shift in both rhetoric and substance. But he’s got to try his way for now”.
That more obvious shift seems to have come sooner than many expected. In the Commons on Wednesday, in response to questions from the Conservative party leader, Kemi Badenoch, over Trump’s change of heart on Chagos, the prime minister insisted he would not yield his position on Greenland.
“President Trump deployed words on Chagos yesterday that were different to his previous words of welcome and support. He deployed those words for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain,” he said.
“He wants me to yield on my position, and I’m not going to do so … I will not yield. Britain will not yield on our principles and values about the future of Greenland and the threats of tariffs.”
Starmer is understood to believe that Trump’s threats against the UK, a country which the US has worked so closely alongside – including helping to seize a Russian-flagged oil tanker earlier this month – are completely unacceptable.
His nerve has also been hardened, insiders say, by Trump’s sudden volte face on the Chagos deal, and what he regards as the opportunism of Badenoch and the Tories over the issue, when he feels that as opposition leader he always put the national interest above politics.
Some on the Labour benches looked surprised to hear their usually diplomatic leader sound so forceful. Yet there are those domestically who would like him to go further still.
They include the leader of the Lib Dems, Ed Davey, who wrote in the Guardian: “Starmer now faces a choice: to continue with his failed strategy of fawning over Trump, or stand up to him, like we would with any other bully. Bullies don’t stop when they are asked to: they stop when they are forced to.”
For now, Starmer’s criticism of Trump is specific and limited. But watch this space: if the US president becomes more threatening, more bullying, then the prime minister’s response – while still carefully considered – is likely to be more of a match for it.
