What a Donald Trump victory means for the UK

Donald Trump’s win is complicated for the UK, because of the president-elect’s wild unpredictability.

The world is going to ask over and over again for the next four years, “what will he say or do next”.

Right now, in foreign ministries around the world, including in London, hypothetical game plans for this scenario are becoming the real deal.

The prep has been done. But the prep may only count for so much.

How will Sir Keir Starmer, the former north London human rights lawyer, gel with the brash New York billionaire?

The omens, in terms of character compatibility, don’t look instantly great.

What role could another brash billionaire, Elon Musk, play in a Trump administration – after his summer of goading the Labour government on X?

It looks like we are in for another rollercoaster ride when it comes to relations with Washington.

We have been here before – as I wrote about last week when reflecting on Theresa May’s experiences as prime minister during the first Trump term.

Within government here, two recent diplomatic successes with Team Trump are pointed to.

Firstly, the dinner the prime minister and the Foreign Secretary David Lammy had with the president-elect at Trump Tower in New York in September.

Trump, sources say, re-arranged his schedule to find time to meet Starmer and Lammy, which was seen as a “good gesture” with the soon to be president.

Secondly, the prime minister managed an early call with Donald Trump shortly after he survived an assassination attempt.

Both opportunities to talk to Trump are put down to an impressive diplomatic operation at the British Embassy in Washington – led by the ambassador Dame Karen Pierce.

Those close to the foreign secretary say he has also been putting in the leg work for months – including before the election – to get to know and to understand Donald Trump and those around him.

On a visit to Washington DC in May, he pointed out in a speech that it was his seventh visit to the US capital in three and a half years.

“I’ve been to the United States more times than I’ve been to France. I’ve lived in America, I’ve studied in America, I’ve got family in America. My father is buried in Texas,” he told an audience at the Hudson Institute.

He described Trump as “often misunderstood,” referred to the Vice President Elect JD Vance as “my friend” and added “I totally get the agenda…that drives America First,” a reference to the phrase Trump used in his Inauguration Speech in January 2017 to spell out that “every decision…will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”

Quite the outreach and attempt to be seen to understand Donald Trump and his success, from a man who once called him a “tyrant in a toupee”.

But privately there is a recognition things aren’t likely to be smooth.

Take the recent row about alleged interference by the Labour Party in the US election after an injudicious social media post by a Labour staffer.

“It just shows you he doesn’t give a stuff about his relationship with the UK,” one former diplomat told me.

So prepare for the opposite of smooth – bumpy, noisy and transactional – finding issues where they can do a deal with Trump, who reveres his capacity as a deal maker.

For this reason, we have already seen Lammy attempt to set out an understanding about Donald Trump’s instincts.

An understanding that Europe has to pay more to fund its own defence.

An understanding that America’s attention is increasingly on Asia, not least because, as Lammy has put it, “the Chinese navy is now the largest in the world and Chinese shipbuilding capacity 230 times larger than the United States.”

And an understanding that, bluntly, Europe cares more about Ukraine than the United States does.

“We want America to support Kyiv as much as it can, but the differences between the Republicans and the Democrats shouldn’t be exaggerated,” is how one Whitehall source put it.

Up to a point: there will be grave concerns in European capitals and beyond that this result could leave Ukraine imperilled.

And that is on top of the prospect of sky-high import taxes, or tariffs, let alone the minute by minute verbal explosions on social media.

So, the mitigations for this moment have continued apace: the foreign secretary recently met Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

The government has also been cultivating relationships with Robert O’Brien, who was national security adviser in Donald Trump’s first term and Elbridge Colby, who some think could be his next national security adviser.

But we are soon likely to find out to what extent any of this preparatory work counts for anything.

A Trump second term is upon us and the world is going to notice.