This is an audio transcript of the Political Fix podcast episode: ‘The Starmer-Trump love-in’
Donald Trump in audio clip
What a beautiful accent. I would have been president 20 years ago if I had that accent.
Lucy Fisher
Welcome to Political Fix from the Financial Times with me, Lucy Fisher. A special man, a terrific person, a tough negotiator — Donald Trump lavished praise on Keir Starmer after their meeting at the White House this week.
So how did the PM pull off such a diplomatic coup? Coming up: what we can conclude from their encounter. Plus, more ammo, less aid — as the world changes, so do the UK’s spending priorities. Joining me to talk about it all are Political Fix regulars Stephen Bush. Hi, Stephen.
Stephen Bush
Hi, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And Miranda Green. Hi, Miranda.
Miranda Green
Hi, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And fresh off Starmer’s plane from Washington, making a heroic effort to join us on Friday, is the FT’s political editor, George Parker. Parker. Hi, George.
George Parker
Hello, Lucy. I don’t know if I’m feeling fresh, but thank you very much for having me.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lucy Fisher
Well, George, we’ve got to kick off with you because you were there in the Oval Office as Keir Starmer and Donald Trump met. They answered extraordinary number of questions there. And of course, they had a press conference later in the day on Thursday. Take us inside the room. What was it like?
George Parker
Well, it’s an extraordinary thing, a Donald Trump press occasion. And in this event it was the Oval Office. And they have what they call the sort of the spray at the staff, which is normally a sort of banal sort of interchange between the presidents and who happens to be meeting him. In this case, the Oval Office was packed full of journalists, there were security guys there — one of them told me off for putting my phone down on the president’s desk — packed in there. And then Donald Trump holds course.
And in this case, he just took questions for, I think, probably 25 minutes. I got to ask some questions as well, which my kids were very excited about. And you know, it’s the Donald Trump show and you’re a part of it. And to be fully honest with you, you know, seeing him operating up close, it’s a more impressive sight, I think, than I probably thought it would be before I went in there.
Lucy Fisher That’s interesting. What impressed you that you hadn’t expected?
George Parker
Well, it can be the bar’s set quite low because I’ve been to events like that in the Oval Office with President Biden. Famously, he introduced himself to Rishi Sunak. He said, welcome, President Sunak, it’s good to see you here again. Of course he was prime minister and he’d never been there before. So the bar was set low.
But I mean, Donald Trump is someone who is a direct communicator. He was very easy in front of journalists. He was taking questions from all comers, and there was a bit of drama at the start there where Keir Starmer produced this letter from King Charles and Donald Trump opened it live on camera and said how excited he was. The whole thing was beautifully choreographed. It was brilliant TV.
Another point, you know, Donald Trump was someone who, on this occasion at least, was determined to get off on the good footing with the UK, very much in contrast with, you know, the criticism that he’s been raining down on America’s traditional allies over the last few weeks.
Lucy Fisher
Well, Miranda, I’m keen for your overall take as well because it has been pretty much across the board a big win for Starmer. And looking at the headlines and the front pages on Friday morning, the i Paper calls him ‘Charmer Starmer’. Even The Mail grudgingly says what an unlikely bromance.
This is one of the best days of press coverage for the UK prime minister since the election, isn’t it?
Miranda Green
Well, you always wanna deliver wildly on the upside of expectations, don’t you? And I think the whole country was worried about what this meeting would deliver for the UK, particularly in terms of the sort of security crisis in western Europe and around Ukraine.
So yes, the meeting went way better I think even than Downing Street could have hoped, than really the most of the country could have hoped. But, you know, was it the revenge of soft power? And does that mean that all of our problems relating to the Trump presidency are over? Emphatically not.
Because even on this amazing, supposed, you know, rhetorical gift from Trump in the Oval Office saying, you know, we’re gonna talk about a trade deal and then more on that and some sort of technology relationship later in the press conference — you know, all of these things, when you get down to the nitty gritty of the negotiation, things could be much less rosy. But that’s not to say that this wasn’t a very, very good start to a very difficult relationship.
George Parker
And just to pick up on that, Miranda, you see, on the plane back from Washington, you couldn’t hear champagne corks popping at the front of the plane. Yes, they thought it had gone well, better than they’d expected. There was obviously a fair amount of trepidation about the press conference, whether the president could be freewheeling and say all kinds of things, but as you say, the hard work is yet to come.
He didn’t get that big security guarantee. He was taking over a peacekeeping force in Ukraine. And the trade deal has been offered. Well, we can go into that in a minute, but the devil is always in the detail.
Lucy Fisher
Stephen, just your high level take on the events of Thursday. And I wanted, you know, do you think there could be a backlash at all here, those scenes of bonhomie between Starmer and Trump? We know from Ipsos, the pollster, that 6 in 10 Brits have an unfavourable opinion of Trump. Might some members of the British public be a bit uncomfortable seeing them so convivial together?
Stephen Bush
Yeah, I mean, of course, large numbers of British voters, particularly Labour’s traditional Liberal core, are really not gonna like the pictures and the vision of particularly this president of the United States and Keir Starmer appearing to get on. I mean, in some ways this is a visit you have to assess in three different buckets, right.
There’s the Labour party’s electoral interests, which are quite poorly served by a good visit in which Donald Trump says pleasant things about him, Keir Starmer avoids saying something which blows up the whole trip by defending the sovereign rights of Canada, etc etc — all of which is grating for parts of the Labour electoral coalition.
There’s the UK-specific interest bucket where the visit went incredibly well. You know, sign off rhetorically for the Chagos Islands deal, you know, warm and positive language about some form of tech-related trade deal effectively beyond what they could have hoped.
But then, of course, that third bucket of the UK’s interests are our interests as a European nation. And that’s the most important part of the Trump presidency in terms of the challenges facing not just Keir Starmer, but all of his European peers. And even though I don’t think anyone connected to Keir Starmer or any reasonable observer in Westminster really expected that this visit would yield anything useful or productive on it.
It didn’t, right? And that is ultimately the biggest and most important of those buckets is the question of how we in Europe defend ourselves and the challenge that poses for Keir Starmer now.
Lucy Fisher
Well, let’s start with one of the first items you mentioned there, Stephen, as we get into the detail on this trade deal. George, tell us more. It sounds like a semi-skimmed trade pact they’re aiming for, not the full trade agreement, something aimed around technology.
So is this good news for Starmer if we don’t have to get into the subject of agri foods and the age-old row about US chlorine-washed chicken and hormone injected beef?
George Parker
So yeah, anything that gets away from chlorine to chicken is obviously a boon for Keir Starmer. And this is not the full fat free trade agreement that was being promised by Brexiteers back in 2016, which was never delivered. As last group predicted, it wouldn’t be delivered. It’s much more targeted. It’s going to be phased. They can stop with what they think will be the easiest parts of a deal, which would probably include some co-operation in areas like technology, artificial intelligence. And then they’ll move on to trickier stuff after that.
Now in itself, it’s not a game-changer economically. But if progress on the sense that they’re creating this new trade dynamic between the US and the UK, something that Peter Mandelson, the new ambassador, likes to call ‘Mega’, Make our Economies Great Again, if you start to make some progress on that, and that gives Donald Trump an excuse not to hit the UK with tariffs in the meantime — and we know this week he’s been threatening the EU with 25 per cent tariffs — well that’s a big win for Keir Starmer. So even if this doesn’t deliver massive economic benefits, just the fact the two sides are talking and delaying tariffs, that is a win.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah. Stephen, on the tariffs signal that Trump said, suggesting that he would be willing to exempt Britain from this punishing levy if this trade pact is agreed, I mean, how much can we set off stall by that? He did say, you know, we’ll see, regarding the issue of tariffs overall.
Stephen Bush
Well, it’s Donald Trump, so it is always up in the air. But the thing that the UK diplomatic services will hope is that they can do what Jean-Claude Juncker did in the first Trump presidency, where he essentially what looked at a bunch of things in the EU that the EU was already going to do, said we’re gonna do all of these wonderful things, tie it up with a bow, and therefore was able to avoid disaster.
And that essentially is what the Labour government is hoping to do, which is basically go, hey, you know a bunch of tech, then we really like them, we think it’s really good for our public services, non-defence. Why don’t we have, you know, a bow saying we’ll buy that.
And I think, you know, Janan Ganesh wrote a piece a while ago, he said one big risk in this presidency is that if it becomes a cliché that in order to manage Trump, you just need to give him something shiny, then it’s possible that that might suddenly and unexpectedly completely stop working and he might suddenly get very angry about, oh, the letter, oh, the stuff with the bow — all of the stuff which is now currently core to effective Trump management because, of course, he is highly unpredictable, among other things.
Miranda Green
Can I just butt in there, Lucy, to ask you and George, all of you, something. I mean watching it, glued to it, the whole thing yesterday, you know, as the warmth grew and the sort of cosy bromance was developing, there was this kind of cold chill that descended when JD Vance entered the conversation.
I didn’t feel like that in the room, George, because also JD Vance again and again intervening publicly and in the Oval Office meeting to sort of say that they don’t see eye to eye, the administration, with our attitude to tech in the broader societal sense of how tech’s affecting us. You know, even look at the row over internet regulation and AI scraping of creative industries here in the UK. Is that not something that could complicate this? Because there’s a slight feeling of, you know, yes, we’ve won over Trump with all this flattery and the state visit, but his henchmen might not be so easy to deal with.
George Parker
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I mean, JD Vance was definitely the gooseberry in the Oval Office. It was like . . . It was a toe-curling display of flattery by both parties, actually. And JD Vance came in and it was interesting, actually, that he started having a go at the British record on free speech. And it was one of a couple of occasions where Keir Starmer actually pushed back, and he said that we’ve had free speech in Britain for hundreds of years, and we will continue to have it for hundreds of years.
Another point actually where he pushed back was where Donald Trump repeated the falsehood that the EU wants back, or Europeans want back the money that they’ve given to Ukraine. But your central point is really important, I think, about what JD Vance was saying there, because that though I said earlier that the idea of a tech deal is one of the easier things you can do, it can actually quickly become quite difficult because if the price of some sort of deal is that the Americans want, for example, to scrap the Online Safety Act, or they want untrammelled access to NHS states or something like that, oh, or they want to remove some of the protections that are being put in place more generally across the web, then you quickly run into a really serious problem.
So yeah, you’re right, Miranda, that JD Vance was definitely a sort of spectre, spectre of the feast.
Lucy Fisher
And George, what JD Vance said, in particular in relation to his concerns about free speech, was, as he said it, infringements on US technology companies that in turn, you know, had an impact on US citizens. I thought it was striking that in the press conference, Starmer wheeled out this just sort of half line about how the UK is going to avoid overregulation of technology and instead embrace innovation and the opportunities it offered. And it felt to me like that was a signal about where the UK is going to head on regulation of tech, and also a bit of a dig at what the US considers the main concerns about the EU’s approach to the sector.
George Parker
Yeah, really good points. And I interviewed Peter Mandelson for the FT Magazine a few weeks ago now, just before he went to Washington, that he was making a point about the fact that the UK has to take advantages of the opportunities of Brexit, which of course is a strange thing to hear from an arch-anti-Brexiteer like Peter Mandelson.
But in areas of tech regulation, this was always seen as one of the potential advantages of being outside the EU, that the UK could plough its own furrow in terms of tech regulation, not go down such a prescriptive route as the European Union. Now, of course, that carries political risks in the UK if we seem to have weak protections on the internet, but that is definitely the path they hope to follow in an attempt to make the UK the American’s number one partner of choice in developing all these new frontier technologies.
Lucy Fisher
Miranda, let’s come on to discuss in more detail what Starmer achieved or perhaps failed to achieve on Ukraine. I mean, there was no real guarantee from Donald Trump that he’s willing to provide a security backstop to any European forces based in Ukraine after a ceasefire that looks like it might be on the horizon. And to my mind, so, the worrying thing he was trying to suggest was that the US being there and having economic interests in Ukraine, mining for rare earth minerals, and were expecting him to ink this deal with Zelenskyy in Washington on Friday — he said that that would be sort of a guarantee enough for Europe without any sort of hard military power.
Miranda Green
Yeah, really very difficult moments. You know, you could feel all of the Europeans in the room kind of tensing when Trump was not answering the questions — one from you, George, about, you know, whether there would be a proper military and security backstop to ensure that any peace deal, you know, lasts and is safe for Ukraine.
I do think maybe we should take some comfort from the fact that Trump was asked to reiterate his support for Article 5 of Nato: you know, the principle that an attack on one is an attack on all. You know, that is something to know that he still sort of believes in that sort of tenet of the western alliance. But in terms of security on the ground for Ukraine should a peace deal be successfully struck, it seems extremely woolly. I mean, an optimistic take to me might be that if you’ve actually got American companies, dug in and literally digging on Ukrainian soil, perhaps near the border with Russia, then there will have to be some sort of security guarantee for those American workers and for those American companies.
So does it become a kind of de facto security guarantee? But it’s not great. You know, hence George’s pointed question to the president about the backstop. So, you know, being flattered as the UK because we have, you know, incredible soldiers, as Trump said, is no good if it prefaces a statement saying, you know, you’re on your own, guys, you’ll be able to cope, because we won’t. And there was that awful moment where Trump said, you know, could you fight Russia on your own as the UK? I mean, that’s the question nobody wants to answer, let alone the prime minister of the UK in a public press conference.
Lucy Fisher
Yeah, he did eventually say that the US would be there for the UK if British troops did come under attack, but it wasn’t that convincing, was it? Because he kept saying the UK has this incredible military, it can stand up for itself, which nobody on the British side would say after years of hollowing out of the forces.
Miranda Green
No, I mean, what would your defence contacts, Lucy — because you’re really well plugged into that world — what would they think about being called incredible soldiers? We have incredible soldiers, but you don’t need us.
Lucy Fisher
They’d laugh or cry at that suggestion to be quite honest. And even those who, you know, are pleased to see sort of an increase in defence spending, which will come on to, you know, concerned that, you know, not just in the UK but across Europe, it is going to take time to ramp up defence manufacturing capacity across the continent.
So I think, you know, one of Starmer’s key objectives and for all European leaders in the weeks and months ahead is, even if privately, some are concerned that we’re seeing the beginning of the end of Nato, the important thing is not to accelerate that schism, because ultimately it is going to take time for Europe to work out how to defend itself more fully. Stephen, what did you make of one of the most striking moments, I thought, of Donald Trump suggesting or questioning whether he had called Zelenskyy a dictator?
Stephen Bush
In a press conference full of bizarre moments, that was, to me, right near the top of the list, because I think it spoke to the central anxiety everyone has to have about . . . Well, there are so many anxieties one has to have about Trump 2.0. Maybe I don’t want to pick one as the central one. But one of the major anxieties that everyone has to have about Trump 2.0 is who is actually in charge here, right? Not least, Trump has always been inconsistent, but that felt like a moment of like, do you understand what’s going on here any more?
You know, like, are you even able to be across the detail of the mad stuff that you purport to want and not want? Obviously, the hope that Keir Starmer’s European peers will have when they meet to discuss this and the defence issue is that is a sign of him going, oh wait, I don’t actually want to be seen as the president who did X, Y, Z. But the concern will be then it’s a sign that, you know, you might have a good meeting with Trump on some issues, but actually the voices that matter are the ones like those of JD Vance, where you have a much more explicitly and avowedly hostile position towards Britain, Europe and our interests.
Lucy Fisher
Miranda, George, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that comment, either. Was he being cynical? Was it an attempt to row back from calling Zelenskyy a dictator? Or do you think he genuinely did sort of, he says one thing one day and forgets about it the next?
Miranda Green
Selective amnesia is great when it is working in our favour, but it may not be so good if he decides to, you know, selectively forget some of the commitments he’s made to Starmer. Right? It can swing both ways.
George Parker
I don’t think for a second he forgot that he called Zelenskyy a dictator just a few days earlier. You know, I don’t want to ascribe too much rule coming to Donald Trump. But if you’re trying to strike a minerals deal with Ukraine, you probably want to make it look like you are a mad person who might be prepared to completely walk away from Ukraine, leave it to its fate, calling its leader a dictator, and then, once the deal is signed — it is being signed on Friday.
In fact, as we left Andrews Air Force Base on Thursday night, Zelenskyy’s plane was parked alongside him, he was just getting out of his plane. Zelenskyy will be feted by Donald Trump when he’s in Washington. And you could see the pivot in that press conference. And Stephen was saying, is he true, the idea that he was a dictator, and started talking about the heroism of the Ukrainian people, the struggle against Russia.
And once that deal is signed on, the rare earth minerals, I won’t be at all surprised we start to see some ratcheting up of hostile rhetoric towards Vladimir Putin to try to get him at the table. Now, I don’t wanna sound like I’ve come back from the White House drinking the Trump Kool-Aid. I haven’t, but you can see some logic if you’re trying to strike a deal with Ukraine for some of the crazy things that he’s been saying.
Lucy Fisher
And, George, what should we expect from this meeting that Starmer’s hosting at Lancaster House on Sunday with 18 other European countries to talk about their joint approach to the future of Ukraine?
George Parker
Well, it’s complicated by the fact that Donald Trump has not given Starmer the key thing he wanted from this meeting at the White House, which was the security guarantees around a potential European peacekeeping force, which, by which we really mean American air cover.
And that complicates things at this meeting on Sunday. Keir Starmer is hosting 18 leaders at Lancaster House. They will be discussing about the future of Ukraine following President Zelenskyy’s meeting with Donald Trump. And I think there will be two sides. The first will be a general acceptance in Europe that more needs to be done on defence spending generally. We’ll come on to that in a minute. But the second thing is how do you maintain that peace?
Although it’s interesting that Keir Starmer said that one element of the backstop would be this idea of the American companies operating inside Ukraine may be close to what is now the front line, but they still need more. And there’s still hope in Downing Street that President Trump might be prepared to do more.
But it’s a risky thing for Trump. You know, you have to look at it from his perspective as well. If you have American planes not in Ukraine, but just across the border, ready to come in to defend what would probably be quite a puny European peacekeeping force, you’ve got to explain to your electors who thought you were the president who’s going to stop all these wars that you could at some point — this is the question I put to Donald Trump in the Oval Office — you could at some point be confronting Russians on the front line. And that’s a big step for any president.
Lucy Fisher
Really, really difficult one to answer. Stephen, you mentioned one of the other buckets that was a big win potentially for Starmer, which was this signal from Trump that he’s gonna row in behind the Chagos Islands deal that the UK has negotiated with Mauritius.
And we knew David Lammy, the foreign secretary, said earlier this week that the UK was essentially giving Washington a veto over the deal because of its implications for US security. At the heart of it is giving sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. The UK is going to lease back the atoll of Diego Garcia, which is home to this really crucial joint US-UK military base. That’s really important. I mean, UK officials have been on tenterhooks for weeks waiting for the Trump administration’s verdict on that proposed deal.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, it is obviously a major fillip for the government, not least because although, of course, the vast majority of the Chagos deal was negotiated under the last Conservative government, and the final shape of it has been obvious since it was announced publicly in the autumn of 2022, it’s become this very useful, opportunistic attack line because the government of the day can’t discuss the finances.
The opposition can go, oh, well, you know, you could pay for, you know, flowers and roses and you know, yeah, how many of your favourite things if you just didn’t do this awful deal? And so the relief to them of being able to go, you negotiate a deal, the deal’s fine, stop, you know, floating these, you know, these essentially fictional numbers, will be to them, a big relief once they can have this deal in the rear-view mirror.
Lucy Fisher
And the other big concern of some of the critics of the deal, either playing coy and perhaps the opposition MPs in the UK, but certainly some of Trump’s senior allies had been, you know, security implications of the deal, with Marco Rubio, now the US secretary of state, saying previously he was worried about it allowing China to increase its interests in the Indian Ocean.
Stephen Bush
Although the thing about the China’s interest in the Indian Ocean is many of the people saying that don’t seem to have ever looked at the area on a map. Like, it’s not like a Chagos Islands and the United Kingdom. But Mauritius is letting India build a base on one of the many islands it already has. So China already has a base on Sri Lanka. I mean, it’s not a magical island like, it’s just . . . It’s just nonsense.
Lucy Fisher
And Miranda, what’s the wider impact on UK politics of the Starmer-Trump bromance?
Miranda Green
Oh wow. What a great question that’s gonna be. Because I mean, a lot of it’s gonna depend clearly on whether all of this warmth between the two men evaporates into precisely nothing or something that’s very controversial, as George explained on the tech angle. But I think already there are issues.
There’s very interesting sort of situation developing in Runcorn, a constituency where a recall petition could force a by-election between Labour, who are the incumbents, and Reform in second place — one of the scores of seats where Reform are in second — because then you might get a sort of test case as to how Trump’s unpopularity in the UK affects the Reform party’s ability to win more seats in Parliament.
We’ve got a piece coming up in the next couple of days from Luke Tryl of More in Common on what the Brits really think about Reform’s warmness towards the Trump regime, particularly over Ukraine and the abandonment of Ukraine that we have been fearing for some weeks. And it’s quite dangerous territory for Nigel Farage.
So, you know, will the British public think, you know, Starmer’s pulled off this great diplomatic coup here? I mean, Robert Shrimsley wrote a great column this week about it being a historic opportunity for Starmer to sort of step up and show he’s a statesman. That’s true. Is that the sort of thing that the electorate will care about more than their wider worries about what’s gonna be cut to provide for this increase in defence spending?
So I think the UK political fallout on this is going to be incredibly interesting to watch over the next few months.
Lucy Fisher
And George, of course, as Miranda points out, in preparation for jetting out to Washington, Starmer announced this big uplift in defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP now to 2.5 per cent by 2027. And the part of the policy announcement was rather marred by a lot of head scratching and confusion about the figures in question. We were looking into this, weren’t we? And Starmer himself claimed it’s an extra £13.4bn and respected think-tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies says it’s more like £6bn.
George Parker
Yeah, I mean Starmer was playing around with the numbers and using a ridiculous number. Basically, the amount we spend on defence is fixed as a share of GDP in 2.3 per cent. And the way that Starmer calculated was this was in three years’ time, there would have been no increase in the defence budget in the meantime, in line with the rise in GDP. So in fact, the real number is £6bn rather than the £13bn he suggested.
And you know, it’s not true because the amount of money they’re taking off the overseas aid budget to pay for this increase, which is what Keir Starmer said, would be covering the entire increase in the defence budget is £6bn. So the answer is it’s actually £6bn and he’s been playing around with the numbers.
But I thought, you know, it’s obviously significant that he did it in the run-up to the meeting with Donald Trump. It’s not anywhere near enough if you listen to military chiefs as you do, Lucy. So £6bn credit doesn’t sound that great, but it’s a sign and I think it’s an important sign as well ahead of this meeting of European leaders on Sunday that everyone has got to bite this — I’m sorry, bite this bullet — but you know what I mean? And actually increase defence spending because it’s whatever, whether Donald Trump’s in the White House or not, Europe has not been doing enough to defend itself.
Lucy Fisher
And Stephen, George mentions the corollary to this defence spending uplift, which is a big cut to the international aid budget. What’s been your take on the reaction from Labour? I’ve been surprised personally that there has been some anger from left-wing, soft-left MPs, some of it private, but it’s been a more muted response than perhaps I would have expected from a party with Labour’s sort of traditional values.
Stephen Bush
Yeah, although I would say watch this space, right? There are . . . the international aid budget is hugely important, what many Labour MPs did before they went into politics. And of course, the nature of being a Marshall MP, it’s what some of them will believe they will go back into after politics. And that doesn’t just go for the soft-left, but in the middle of the party, in the far left, right? You know, like it’s a huge, you know, item of great pride to many playwrights as well. There’s quite a lot of quiet anger circulating on WhatsApp already.
And I suspect then what we will start to see is, well, precisely organisations where some of these MPs used to work going, hey, you know that our project, this project that you were involved in, is now in jeopardy. So I think the rage on this is going to build. He has, I think, slightly managed to blindside people with it, not least because the weird fiction of this is that at the start of the year, there was this whole thing of, well, at the moment most of the ODA budget is actually going to Ukrainian refugees in the United Kingdom being spent by the Home Office.
But don’t worry, we’ll get that back out and go back to, you know, spending that overseas on the world’s poorest. I think that as the kind of shock of, oh, wait, you’re not going to do that and instead you’re just going to cut some more programs and spend it elsewhere — as that starts to work through the system and as the cross-party alliance on trying to get more foreign aid in Parliament fires up, we will start to see some of the kind of shock and hurt on the Labour benches turned to anger and activity.
Lucy Fisher
That’s right, Miranda, isn’t it? Because I think the figures are that last year, quite a surprising 28 per cent of the ODA budget — the Official Development Assistance budget — was spent in the UK on hotels for asylum seekers and refugees, rather than overseas for the poorest countries.
And an FT analysis this week shows that with this extra cut that Starmer has announced, that close to half the newly reduced aid pot is gonna be spent in the UK, which I think most people find bizarre as a concept, that aid could be spent that way within a technical definition.
On the other hand, this is popular with the public, isn’t it? YouGov survey showed 64 per cent of Britons wanted to see the aid budget cut. So do you think Starmer’s made a canny political move here?
Miranda Green
I think he’s made a short-term ruthless move for the reasons that Stephen has outlined that most Labour MPs, and maybe even a large chunk of support in the country, will just take on board the idea that the world has changed and this is an international crisis, and this is how we have to respond to it.
But in terms of that aid budget being spent on hotels for asylum seekers here in the UK, all the things pinging into my inbox and I’m sure it’s true for the rest of you as well, from people who work in the development world and in those aid projects. It is shock, but it’s also there’s always two or three paragraphs in there protesting about the fact that so much of this money is channelled to the Home Office and saying, you know, this is where we should concentrate some of our lobbying activity to say, you know, hang on a minute, why can’t Yvette Cooper’s department pay for this? Because it’s clearly nothing to do with our HIV programmes in Africa.
So I think this will become more and more tricky in a sense for the Home Office to sort of defend why they’re absorbing so much of the aid budget as it sort of is pushed down. I think there will also, exactly as Stephen said, be a lot of phones ringing from people who are embedded in the world they used to work in, in development and the charity and NGO world, you know, trying to work out what programs can be saved, what can they convincingly say. This is a unique UK project that we’ve proven that can work. You know, if the aid’s smaller, it’s got to be better targeted. And I think actually quite a lot of people in the development world have taken that on board. You know, maybe something can be saved in a positive sense from that.
But I just think that the background politically to this is still what it’s been for the last few months, which is that the government was elected to improve public services. And when you’re actually gonna divert a lot of your spending activity on to defence, and that means you’re able to deal perhaps less with the public services, your electoral problems do, you know, they’re only mounting.
And Starmer proving himself to be effective on the world stage may do something for his personal standing, but will it help Labour’s electoral prospects in the success of their central programme? That’s way more debatable.
Lucy Fisher
George, final word to you on this. I mean, zooming out, this aid cut comes after Starmer for the time being, retaining the two-child benefit cap. He took away the universal winter fuel allowance from pensioners. We think he’s going to try and tackle welfare in quite a ruthless way, to use Miranda’s word.
Is this a sort of sign of him sort of swinging to the right, influenced by Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff? Or is it, you know, a sort of sign of good politics trying to combat the long-term damaging narrative that Labour administrations tend to be profligate with the public finances?
George Parker
Well, I don’t think it’s instinctively what Keir Starmer would want to be doing, but he’s been driven into these decisions by economics and the dire state of the public finances. And it does have the attendant effect of helping to address your Reform problem on the right. But certainly if you look at some of the things you’ve just listed there, Lucy, and this policy on raiding the aid budget to pay for an uplift in defence, announced against a backdrop of Union flags, of course, is as my colleague Chris Hope from GB News pointed out, almost word for word, exactly the policy set out in the Reform UK manifesto. It’s an incredible thing.
And yes, Morgan McSweeney will be tapping his foot in approval because it’s the kind of policy the Daily Telegraph loves and the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. But, you know, it’s a tough one for the Labour. I’ll just remind you that the 0.7 per cent of GDP aid target was first achieved in 2013 when George Osborne, the austerity chancellor, was in the Treasury, and George Osborne maintained that 0.7 per cent thing all the way through the coalition government. So it’s a big moment for the Labour party.
Miranda Green
It was part of the kind of detoxification project, wasn’t it, during the coalition years? So, you know, will it toxify Labour? I don’t know. It’s a really hard one to call, I think, because of the international crisis being so worrying.
Stephen Bush
Also I think, you know, let’s think about like the Labour electoral coalition as it stood in 2024. Let’s think about the bit of it that voted Conservative in 2015. That is you know, that is why, you know, Battersea didn’t used to have a Labour MP, Putney didn’t used to have a Labour MP, Brentwood and Isleworth didn’t used to have a Labour MP.
People who are quite affluent who have done quite well for themselves, are socially concerned, whose tax is going to go up every year under a Labour government, are they really going to enjoy basically being told, we hate your ideas about tackling the world’s poor, particularly if you’re in Brentwood and Isleworth, we disagree with you, not just on an airport you disagree with for climate grounds, but on your lived and local environment grounds. And by the way, public services in the UK also aren’t getting much better.
I do think that a feature of politics since 2015 has been complacency about that group of swing voters, who have actually mattered quite a lot in every single one of the elections we’ve had since then. And you can easily, I think, imagine a world in which we will wake up in 2024 and went, oh, God, who would, particularly if the Conservatives do, as I’m sure they will at some point, change to a better leader. People going, oh, who would have thought that these former Labour Conservative swing voters might decide, well, look, if I’m not gonna get any of the stuff I want on the social side, maybe I shouldn’t also tolerate a party which seems to treat me as a slightly embarrassing piggy bank.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lucy Fisher
We’ve just got time left for Political Fix stock picks. Miranda, who are you buying or selling this week?
Miranda Green
So I think I’m actually gonna buy Lin-Manuel Miranda, the writer of the Hamilton musical, on the basis that in the Oval Office, we saw one of the most fun scenes in the Hamilton musical weirdly replicated by Keir Starmer, delivering a message from the King to Donald Trump. In the musical, obviously, that’s George III, you know, being ridiculed as an unpleasant despot, patronising the American colonies. But this was a very different sort of message from the English king.
And this was, you know, King Charles inviting Donald Trump to a state visit, which did seem to work and it seemed to be a diplomatic coup, even though it was a very weird moment, watching in silence as Trump opened the envelope and read the letter from King Charles. So I’m buying Lin-Manuel Miranda on the basis that life was imitating art in a good way this week.
Lucy Fisher
George, how about you?
George Parker
Well, I would buy John Prescott’s stocks because I went to see, talking of Western theatre shows, I went to see a RSC production of Kyoto about the climate change talks back there and the start of the climate change. Also, John Prescott plays a starring role, which I’d forgotten about, but I’m not gonna for him. I’m gonna go for Keir Starmer.
I think it’s unavoidable to say that he had a good week, had the best media coverage I think he’s had since he became prime minister. It was a success by most measures, his visit to the White House. So I’ll go for Keir Starmer.
Lucy Fisher
Stephen, how about you?
Stephen Bush
I am going to buy stock in Wes Streeting. The question mark around Wes Streeting in parts of the Labour party is obviously, you know, Wes is a great presenter, a great media asset, great at getting parts of the press to write him up as a reformer.
But does he actually have a plan to reform the NHS, which is obviously so important to their prospects? And he’s also inherited the same problem that every health secretary since Jeremy Hunt has, which is this deeply ill-advised NHS reorganisation in 2012, then you have to find some way to try and improve outcomes without wanting to reopen all of that unpleasantness again.
He’s, you know, got a new transition CEO of NHS England this week. He’ll hope that will turn things around. I think we’re starting to see the beginnings of a plausible plan to reform and improve NHS outcomes.
Miranda Green
Lucy, what about you?
Lucy Fisher
Well, I think I’ve got to sell Anneliese Dodds this week, the development minister, who had it sprung on her just on Monday, we understand, this huge scythe taken to her budget. It doesn’t seem like she has been particularly cut in to the big plan for the aid budget. So it’s not been a great week for her.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well that’s all we’ve got time for. George — and by my estimation, you’ve been awake for about 48 hours now and written thousands of words — so I hope you manage to get some sleep this weekend. But George, Miranda and Stephen, thanks for joining.
Miranda Green
Thank you.
Stephen Bush
Thanks, Lucy.
George Parker
Thank you, Lucy.
Lucy Fisher
And that’s it for this episode of the FT’s Political Fix. I’ve put links to subjects discussed in this episode in the show notes. Do check them out. They’re articles we’ve made free for Political Fix listeners.
There’s also a link there to Stephen’s award-winning Inside Politics newsletter. You’ll get 30 days free. And don’t forget to subscribe to the show. Plus, please do leave a review or a star rating. It really helps spread the word.
Political Fix was presented by me, Lucy Fisher and produced by Manuela Saragosa. Original music and sound engineering by Breen Turner. The broadcast engineers were Andrew Georgiades and Rod Fitzgerald. Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. We’ll meet again here next week.
