‘Starmer’s big moment’: can PM persuade Trump not to give in to Putin? | Keir Starmer

When Keir Starmer is advised on how to handle his crucial meeting with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, he will be told by advisers from Downing Street and the Foreign Office to be very clear on his main points and, above all, to be brief.

“Trump gets bored very easily,” said one well-placed Whitehall source with knowledge of the president’s attention span. “When he loses interest and thinks someone is being boring, he just tunes out. He doesn’t like [the French president, Emmanuel] Macron partly because Macron talks too much and tries to lecture him.”

Starmer will also be advised to flatter Trump when he can, to say that everyone is so grateful that he has focused the world’s attention on the need for peace between Russia and Ukraine. But to flatter subtly. And not to lay it on too thick.

One – unconfirmed – story from Theresa May’s first visit to see Trump at the White House in 2017 is doing the rounds in Whitehall again before the Starmer trip, and is being used as a cautionary tale for the current prime minister.

“When May first went to see Trump, she was told she had to congratulate him on lots of things,” said one source.

“So she rushed over to him and congratulated him on his new cabinet appointments, saying: ‘You’ve appointed a great team, Donald.’

“At which point he said: ‘Oh thank you so much, Theresa – who do you particularly like among them?’ Which left her a bit stumped, so she just said: ‘Oh, well, all of them, Donald.’”

The lesson being that too much flattery can get you into trouble if you do not do your homework.

Dealing with, and responding to, Trump in his self-appointed role as ultra-provocative would-be global peacemaker is requiring other leaders the world over to perform near-impossible balancing acts when framing their responses.

Many of the US president’s statements on the Ukraine conflict, such as those suggesting that Ukraine was responsible for the Russian invasion and that its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a dictator, are regarded by European governments, including the British one, as patently ludicrous.

Yet at the same time, no one can say so for fear of what the man who said those things will do next and what revenge he might wreak in return.

Peter Ricketts, former UK ambassador to Paris, said that Starmer should himself tune out from Trump’s rhetoric. “He should focus not on what Trump says but what he does. He needs to get into Trump’s mind that a rushed deal with [Vladimir] Putin over the heads of Ukraine/Europe is bound to be a deal that serves Putin’s interests, and that Putin would be seen as strong and Trump weak.”

Another senior UK source agreed, saying that Starmer needed to convey to Trump that the only thing that would stop him earning his place in history would be by getting a great peace that was not seen as a “fair deal”. “He needs to make Trump think that his success rests on not giving in to Putin, because if he does he will himself seem weak,” said the source.

While cross-continental mud-slinging has intensified, UK political leaders have had a painfully difficult few days trying to adapt to Trump’s barrage of remarks, the latest of which was to say neither Starmer nor Macron – who will meet Trump at the White House on Monday – have done anything of note to sort out the war in Ukraine.

Even Nigel Farage, who prides himself on his closeness to Trump and the Republicans, has had to equivocate and throw up a cloud of deliberate confusion around his own responses, so he can claim to be both distancing himself from the US president and validating his interventions at the same time.

Speaking to Sky News on Thursday about Trump’s statement that Zelenskyy was a dictator, Farage said: “Take everything Trump says truthfully, but not literally.”

The Reform UK leader then tried to argue that Trump “doesn’t literally say Ukraine started the war”, and was instead focused on bringing peace. When, however, it was put to Farage that Trump had told Zelenskyy: “You should have never started it [the conflict],” Farage then replied: “OK, he did. If you’re happy.”

With UK public opinion overwhelmingly critical of Trump’s comments on Zelenskyy and Ukraine – today’s Opinium poll for the Observer shows the Trump administration has a -40% approval rating on Ukraine compared with -2% for the previous Biden administration – the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, also felt the need to part company with Trump, tweeting on X that “President Zelenskyy is not a dictator”, though she backed him over the need for European nations to increase defence spending.

About 61% of Tory voters disagree with the Trump administration on Ukraine, so for Badenoch not to express some reservations over the US president could have left her in big trouble in her own party.

The Liberal Democrats, meanwhile, looking for more seats and votes behind the “blue wall” have spotted an opportunity as the anti-Trump party. Calum Miller, their foreign affairs spokesman, said the Lib Dems had a duty to stand up for people in his constituency and others who flew Ukrainian flags in their villages and had taken in Ukrainian refugees.

“It is our role to be their voice in parliament,” he said “to say that Trump is a narcissist who is not to be trusted.”

Government sources suggested on Saturday nightthat Starmer would probably try to speak to Macron on Sunday before the French president flies to Washington, so as to agree the broad outlines of a European position.

But another senior source said the last thing Starmer should do when he meets Trump is try to speak for the Europeans or represent a European position.

“Trump has made clear what he thinks of European leaders [last]week. Starmer needs to be his own man, to say the UK was the first country to offer to send troops to Ukraine and do its bit.

“If he does that, and succeeds in persuading Trump that it will look terrible to the world if he allows Putin just to get everything he wants, it could be a big moment for him.”