Having thus far taken a highly cautious line with the capricious Donald Trump, Keir Starmer broke with the US president this week over the latter’s desire to acquire Greenland.
With the dust settling on Trump’s address to Davos and his ruling out of military force and tariffs, the UK prime minister congratulated his own approach. Starmer remarked: “We’ve got through the last few days with a mix of British pragmatism, common sense, but also that British sense of sticking to our values and our principles.”
In foreign policy, pragmatism means a lack of ideology or simply “doing what works”. It is related to conservative traditions in political thought, with roots in political philosopher Edmund Burke’s scepticism of the French Revolution.
