All this could be no more than wishful thinking. Trump 2.0 may be a good deal more dangerous than my admittedly faintly complacent musings credit him as being.
By opting for JD Vance as his running mate, Trump has chosen someone who demonstrably doesn’t understand anything about European history. Anyone who thinks Putin is not a threat to Europe, as Vance has said, needs their head examined.
Trump claims he could settle the war in Ukraine in twenty four hours. Vance, who led Congressional opposition to the last round of military aid to Ukraine, seems wholly relaxed with what that would mean; sayonara Volodymyr Zelensky.
Where does the UK, with its newly installed Labour Government, fit into all this?
Ideologically, Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are worlds apart, the one a self-proclaimed “socialist”, the other a populist plutocrat. Yet Trump is nothing if not supremely transactional in his approach to government, including international relations, and beyond Ukraine the difference in world view may not matter that much. The key is to establish a dialogue.
Thanks to the intermediation of the UK’s ambassador to Washington, Karen Pierce, Sir Keir was reportedly one of the very few foreign leaders to speak directly to Trump following last weekend’s assassination attempt.
It will be recalled that Ms Pierce was appointed ambassador to the US to rebuild bridges with Trump after her predecessor, Kim Darroch, described Trump’s government as “dysfunctional”, “inept” and “divided” in leaked correspondence.
Pierce’s intervention may come to be seen as pure gold in the event of a second Trump presidency. If Trump goes ahead with his tariff plan, might there not be a carve-out for the UK and the rest of the Anglosphere? It’s a possibility, even if the chances of an all-embracing free trade deal with the US would still seem remote.
Britain already enjoys a favourable trading relationship with the US, which is the only major economy with which the UK has a decent trade surplus. We don’t necessarily need a fully fledged trade deal. Defending what we have already must be the goal.
Poor Rishi Sunak. The glory for all the work he’d put into the much sought after “reset” in relations with the EU went to Sir Keir instead when the new Prime Minister hosted a pre-arranged summit of European leaders at Blenheim Palace last week.
The closer relationship sought will be tricky to engineer without giving up some Brexit freedoms on the one hand and alienating Trump on the other.
Yet the prize has to be to ride both horses at the same time, or to return the UK to the role it used to play before Brexit as a bridge between Europe and the US. Unlikely though a pairing of Trump and Starmer might seem, this is not an altogether impossible goal given the way the tectonic plates of the geopolitical landscape keep shifting.
It doesn’t have to be a choice between Trump’s America, von der Leyen’s EU, and Xi Jinping’s China. If there is ever to be an economic purpose to Brexit, it lies with steering a self-advantageous course between all three.
As to the economic ramifications of Trump 2.0, I wouldn’t bet on disaster. Opponents talk of the most consequential election in US history, by which they generally mean economic mayhem and the end of American democracy. Somehow I doubt it. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
