What the US-UK relationship would look like with Keir Starmer in power

It is unusual for Britain’s electoral cycle to coincide with that of the United States. The U.K. has not held a parliamentary election in an American presidential year since 1992, and the last time they came within weeks of each other was 1964. But it will likely happen again this year, with most expecting the British general election to be called for October or November, close to America’s fateful polling day Nov. 5.

Unless there is a seismic political upset, the Labour Party will win in Britain after 14 years in opposition, and Keir Starmer will become prime minister. What can America expect of him, and how would he react to a Democratic or a Republican triumph?

Starmer is a 61-year-old lawyer who looks younger and has only been a member of Parliament for nine years. From 2008 to 2013 he was chief public prosecutor for England and Wales, overseeing around 800,000 prosecutions every year. He describes himself as a “socialist,” though he qualifies that by talking about “practicality” and his chief motivation being to address “deep inequalities.” Even in Britain, unqualified use of the “s-word” is only for the reckless — and Starmer is anything but reckless.

Elected leader of the Labour Party in 2020 after it was subjected to a drubbing at the hands of Boris Johnson, Starmer has watched Joe Biden’s presidency with extraordinarily close care. The Economist described him as “infatuated”: He has noted the president’s focus on job creation and avoidance of entrenched culture-war battles, as well as his willingness to invest in domestic industry and his success in reducing inflation. His spokespeople on finance, foreign affairs and defense have all made high-profile visits to august Beltway institutions, while Labour Party apparatchiks met discreetly with Democratic Party insiders last June.

For President Biden, then, Starmer would be a welcome ally, a British leader aligned on economic, cultural and broad geopolitical values. For Starmer, rekindling even a faint glimmer of the rapport Tony Blair and Bill Clinton enjoyed in the late 1990s would be a major achievement in extending Britain’s reach and influence. Biden could more realistically perceive an opportunity to have a reliable friend in NATO, at the United Nations and in other multilateral forums (if no longer in the European Union).

There is, however, the other possibility. November could see former President Trump win the election and prepare for a second term in the White House. The approach of Trump 2.0 to a Starmer premiership would be less accommodating: Trump’s worldview — it is misleading to call it an ideology, because it is too disparate and incoherent for that — is so eccentric that it would start fires on half a dozen issues, from Ukraine and NATO to tariffs and Taiwan.

Trump had an uneasy relationship with Theresa May, prime minister from 2016-2019, regarding her as weak yet simultaneously reluctant to take his advice. But she was not an easy person to deal with, chilly and formal, rarely able to relax. His connection with Boris Johnson (prime minister from 2019-2022) was easier, as each was liable to ignore social convention and protocol, and both were fundamentally self-interested and solipsistic. “They call him Britain Trump,” the then-president said of Johnson in 2019 (they didn’t).

Starmer is not an especially charismatic or charming man. He is a human rights lawyer, “woke” before that term existed and occasionally fussily pedantic. He gives the impression of a man whose tiniest physical movement is planned and weighed in advance, while Trump seems not to know what he is going to do until the second he does it. In purely personal terms, Starmer sometimes wants to seem more agreeable than he is, which may simply defer disagreements with a man as lacking in careful insight as Trump. Starmer has talked about “making it work” if Trump returns to power, albeit with the agonized lack of enthusiasm of a partner staying in a marriage “for the sake of the children,” but he is a pragmatist.

If Starmer does walk through the door of Downing Street this autumn, the next prime minister will have been fundamentally a negative choice rather than a positive one. The British public has consistently regarded him as “doing badly” for more than three years, and the inevitability of his triumph owes much more to the abysmal approval ratings of Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Starmer is regarded overall as a bad leader and someone who should not be prime minister, but his rival is much more strongly disliked. Starmer knows, as a veteran lawyer, that a win is a win, but he must also know that not all wins are the same.

A Biden White House would find Starmer a well-wisher and useful spear-carrier. For Biden’s diplomacy, he would fall firmly into the category of “nice to have.” For Trump, he would prove a vague annoyance, and could not be counted on to echo the wilder MAGA phrasebook. But the Labour leader knows that, with rejoining the European Union off the table for the time being, the “special relationship,” however much it is derided and diminished, is one he needs. Whether loyal ally or critical friend, the United Kingdom relies on its trans-Atlantic connections to support its place in the world.

Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.