As Trump’s menaces Europe – the UK doesn’t know what to do

Will the real Keir Starmer please stand up?

Edvard Munch - Despair (1894)

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In the next few weeks European governments may have to cope as best they can with:

• The Trump administration turning its foul words about President Zelensky into foul deeds by cutting military aid to Ukraine and Nato. It is already talking about withdrawing troops from Europe, and we can expect worse to come.

• Russia, which has shown no interest in Trump’s ceasefire, taking advantage of his weakening of Western security to advance into Ukraine and launch hybrid warfare operations in the rest of Europe

• Elon Musk’s rampage through the American state leaving the U.S. unable to support Europe – in the unlikely event that it wants to do so.

• The needless stock market rout Donald Trump inflicted bringing a recession and a broader financial crisis, as hitherto unseen weak links in the financial system snap. There are already signs that hedge funds and the US bond market are buckling.

• European countries and corporations feeling the need to bribe Trump in the hope that his limitless greed will spare them from pain.

In short, we will face a simultaneous security crisis and economic crisis.

In fact, we already do.

All the major countries of Europe are frightened – those in eastern Europe most of all, for obvious reasons. But all can turn to the European Union as a source of solidarity and support – except for the United Kingdom.

Keir Starmer won the UK election last year on a promise that he would stay out, not only of the European Union, but of the Single Market and Customs Union as well.

Even though he was one of the leaders of the campaign to stop Brexit from 2016 until 2019 – Starmer U-turned and accepted the broad outlines of the disastrous deal Boris Johnson negotiated. Capitulation, he thought, was the price of winning power.

It did not stop there. Starmer accepted not just Brexit but nearly everything else about a status quo he had previously criticised.

The result is that Starmer has become an unfathomable man. No Westminster journalist or politician I know pretends to understand him.

We know what he used to believe. We know what he now says he believes. But what he truly believes is another matter.

Crises define men and women. They are storms without a hiding place.

Donald Trump has blown the status quo that Keir Starmer was happy to serve into one thousand pieces.

And the UK must either grovel before the potentate on the Potomac or return to its European alliance.

Mark Carney and Emmanuel Macron can stand up to Trump. Can Keir Starmer? Does he have the courage and breadth of vision?

Or to put it another way: Who is he?

I cannot overemphasise how unprepared the Labour government is for this crisis. You need to go back five years to understand why.