The sign that Starmer is ‘Trump-proofing’ his government

Labour appears keen to wait and see what happens in the US before appointing key positions. But it could spell trouble for Britain’s defence

When President Franklin Roosevelt knocked on the door of Winston Churchill’s suite during the prime minister’s first visit to the White House in December 1941, he was somewhat taken aback to find Churchill “stark naked, a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other”. Roosevelt offered to leave but Churchill said there was no need: “You see, Mr President, I have nothing to hide.”
The relationship between the UK and the US is a famously special one. But quite how special fluctuates over time. One of the key variables, as this anecdote from Robert Schmuhl’s new book, Mr Churchill in the White House, illustrates, is the chemistry between the respective inhabitants of No 10 Downing Street and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
With the moving vans having just left one address and being booked at the other, it is understandable that trans-Atlantic diplomacy is currently in a degree of limbo. Some foreign policy experts believe this may be part of the reasoning behind the strange and perplexing case of General Gwyn Jenkins’s recent defenestration.
Keir Starmer has cancelled the appointment of Jenkins, the former vice-chief of the Armed Forces and one of the UK’s top generals, as national security adviser. The widely respected military man had been picked for the role by Rishi Sunak in April. However, Starmer has reportedly chosen to rerun the application process.
The move certainly conforms to Starmer’s modus operandi and propensity to surround himself with loyalists since taking over as Labour leader. He first worked assiduously behind the scenes to purge his party of Left-wing Corbynistas. A group of centrists loyal to the party leader were then handed plum seats ahead of the general election, in a move dubbed “the march of the Starm-troopers” by Labour insiders.
Since gaining power, the Prime Minister has made a number of unusual appointments to Civil Service positions, including Ian Corfield, a Labour donor, as a director in the Treasury and Jess Sargeant moving from the Starmer-aligned think tank Labour Together to the Cabinet Office.
According to some reports, Jenkins may also have been blocked from assuming the role because he failed to pass on evidence of extrajudicial executions by members of the SAS in Afghanistan to the military police. However, it’s also possible that No 10 wants a more “politically loyal” figure holding such a key position at the heart of government. Potential candidates to replace the four-star Royal Marines general include Labour figures such as Lord Mandelson and David Miliband.
The move has been met with some incredulity in military circles. Jenkins was vice-chief of the Defence Staff until June and previously served as military assistant to then-prime minister, David Cameron, and deputy national security adviser with responsibility for conflict, stability and defence from 2014 to 2017.
Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a retired British tank unit commander and expert in chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, argues that Jenkins was “ideally suited and qualified” for the role. “With the potential for escalation of the Ukraine conflict into a European war not only possible but likely, the defence and security of this country should be No 10’s number one priority,” he says.
Asked last week why he had cancelled Jenkins’s appointment as his security adviser, Starmer refused to say. “There will be an open and transparent process [to find a new security adviser],” said the prime minister. “And, no, I’m not going to publicly discuss individual appointments.”
However, foreign policy and military experts, adept at assessing the terrain beneath the ever-shifting geopolitical sands, believe they can discern the contours of another possible motivation. It has been suggested that Starmer might delay a final decision until after the November US presidential election, wary of potential diplomatic complications should Donald Trump return to office.
Starmer has said he is keen to reset relations between the UK and both Europe and the US following a period in which Brexit has tended to eclipse all other considerations. However, for the first time since 1993, the UK general election took place only a few months before a presidential election in the US, leaving Starmer unsure who he will be dealing with in the White House for the bulk of his term.
The Government has repeatedly emphasised that the UK will work with whomever ends up winning the election. As Tony Blair and George W Bush demonstrated, the relationship between prime minister and president is based more on personalities than ideological affinity.
Nevertheless, Labour has strong links to Kamala Harris’s party and undoubtedly has its fingers crossed for a Democrat win. Starmer and Harris are both former public prosecutors who have promised voters “you can always trust me to put country above party”. Jonathan Ashworth, the head of Labour Together, Morgan McSweeney, No 10’s political strategist, and a number of Labour MPs attended the Democratic national convention in Chicago earlier this month.
Labour appears keen to wait and see what happens in the US before making decisions on a number of key positions, including the national security adviser and the UK’s ambassador to Washington, among others. This is part of broader consultations among European governments about ensuring that Nato, Western support for Ukraine and the security of other individual countries will endure should Trump regain the White House in November.
Some have taken to calling these measures the “Trump-proofing” of Nato and the broader Western alliance. During the presidential debate last month that ultimately resulted in Joe Biden ending his campaign for reelection, the president asked Trump: “You’re going to stay in Nato or you’re going to pull out of Nato?” By way of an answer, Trump tilted his head in a shrug.
However, de Bretton-Gordon argues that such ambivalence makes it all the stranger to leave the position of national security adviser vacant when the teams in the Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office and Home Office are all new: “With US elections now very much in view, Starmer must plan for the defence and security of this nation, possibly without the overwhelming support we have become used to from the US.”
There are many in Europe who share concerns about the concept of Trump-proofing the security agenda. “Europeans have to get rid of the fixation on the US election date in November,” says one senior Nato source. “We have to strengthen European defence no matter who will win. It’s not just that we would wake up in November without Trump as president and the whole problem would be off our shoulders.”
The mood music at the Nato’s 75th anniversary summit in July was gloomy. Publicly, the 32 European and North American allies who are committed to defending one another from armed attack, stressed the importance of strength through solidarity. But their messaging was soured by Russian advances in Ukraine and the Trump-allied congressional Republicans delaying US funding to Kyiv.
Conversations on the fringes of the summit focussed on countries preparing for any lessening of US support in matters related to defence and security. At the time, Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow on Nato at the Atlantic Council think tank, said: “Freaking out about a second Trump term helps no one.”
A second Nato insider agrees that European countries must be prepared to increase funding for their own armed forces. “The message is clear: Europeans need to spend more on defence. [That is what will] secure the commitment of any American president to the security of the European continent.
“The second thing we can do is spend more on Ukraine, or at least make clear we can spend more in the future. And the third area is to ensure we open up our agenda to discuss things that the American president feels are important.”
The main means by which Europe can ensure they are pulling their weight is by consistently hitting or exceeding the target of investing at least 2 per cent of gross domestic product in defence. In 2024, 23 Nato allies are on track to go past this threshold compared to just three in 2014. However, Nato allies are pushing to raise defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP and many countries, including the UK, are having to weigh such suggestions against other demands on the public purse.
Foreign policy experts say European countries must also prove they are serious about addressing concerns over China and the Pacific, which is currently the item at the very top of the geopolitical and defence planning agendas in Washington.
“The idea of Trump-proofing sounds good, but when you look at it, it’s things that Nato should be doing anyway,” says Ed Arnold, a research fellow for European Security at Rusi. “We know where the US is looking, that the US wants to do less in the Euro-Atlantic and more in the Indo-Pacific… that does mean slightly less within Nato.”
Arnold points out that, although a Harris presidency may well be the preferred option in the chancelleries of Europe, it would not necessarily spell the end of their problems. US reluctance to play its traditional, post-war role as the world’s policeman arguably began under Barack Obama, who sensed there were limits to American power in an increasingly multipolar world and in the wake of his predecessor’s misadventures in Iraq.
“While Trump is the most dangerous option for Nato, if the Democrats win, [Nato allies] will still need to do more to mitigate for a lack of US engagement and attention, it might just be less severe under a Harris presidency,” says Arnold. “There is precedent with Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. That was a Nato operation, but it was not a Nato withdrawal, he basically just pulled the carpet from under the Europeans with no consultation.”
Europeans must, Arnold argues, rebalance their relationship with the US and shoulder more of the responsibility for Western security “regardless of who is in the White House”. The first step for the UK in this regard would be the appointment of a well-qualified national security adviser. Without one, Starmer may very quickly start looking a little naked.