In Europe’s crisis Starmer and Badenoch should learn from Sunak

Good morning. This isn’t an American politics newsletter, except, let’s face it, it sort of is these days. The consequences of Donald Trump and how the UK government and politics are and should be responding to them is the big story in British politics.

For both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch, there are lessons to be learnt from their shared predecessor, Rishi Sunak. More on those below.

EU aren’t going to like what comes after America

Europe is facing a series of crises caused by Donald Trump.

Crisis one: Donald Trump repeating a series of pro-Kremlin talking points about how Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “a dictator” who “talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won”, deepens the rift between Washington and Kyiv, and the crisis facing all of Europe.

Crisis two: as the Washington Post reveals, Pete Hegseth, US defence secretary, has ordered senior leaders throughout the US military to identify programmes for deep cuts. Here’s the part that really matters for us in the UK:

The list is notable, too, for what it omits. While it explicitly endorses “support agency funding” for Indo-Pacific Command and Northern Command, which oversees homeland defence, it does not extend similar significance to several other major geographic commands. Those include European Command, which has had a major role in overseeing US support for Ukraine during its three-year war with Russia; Central Command, which manages operations across the Middle East; and Africa Command, which directs a force of several thousand US troops spread out across that continent.

The UK still faces a serious terror threat from Islamic fundamentalism. However, the security services and all of us have benefited from the defeats that organised jihadism suffered on the battlefield in the Middle East and Africa. In addition to the well-discussed threats facing the UK and Europe from Vladimir Putin, these cuts, if implemented, would increase the threat that the UK would face from organised jihadism.

As the FT reveals, the UK and France are putting together plans for a “reassurance force” to enforce any ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, while John Paul Rathbone and Henry Foy have a piece that sets out the scale of what Europe would need to do to be able to defend itself without the support of the US.

American leadership of the world has been a fantastic deal for Europe and whatever comes next is going to be difficult and expensive for the continent.

As I have written before, the idea that the UK’s contribution to navigating these problems can be adequately addressed by increasing UK defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to only 2.5 per cent is crazy. In addition, as this explainer from George Parker and Lucy Fisher sets out, raising that additional £5bn and £6bn a year — without increasing taxes — comes with various challenges.

There is a solution from Rishi Sunak’s time as chancellor: he faced a series of ill-advised commitments on tax like Rachel Reeves does now. He opted to break the spirit but not the letter by introducing the health and social care levy, which his party hated but the country did not. Reeves should do the same with some kind of security and defence levy now, although another option is some kind of joint EU-UK-Norway debt issuance.

Despite what Kemi Badenoch claims, the last Tory government did not leave behind a “fully funded” plan to increase defence spending from 2.3 to 2.5 per cent of GDP. In a pre-election announcement without any accompanying documents from the OBR or a clear plan on how to fund it, the last government committed to doing so, but that is not the same thing. She continues to be troublingly detached from the detail of what is going on — she has called for Keir Starmer to “get on a plane to Washington”, which is something widely reported that he is doing next week — is the latest example. She seems to have resolved to do two things: to be unhelpful and oppositional wherever possible.

Among other things, I think this is bad politics for her: people don’t like that oppositions are always, well, oppositional, and she also does need a point of differentiation with Nigel Farage and Reform UK. She should take this one, where she actually does disagree with Reform and aligns with the government on the matter of support for Ukraine.

There’s an off-the-shelf lesson for her from Rishi Sunak, too, which is to note how the former prime minister is conducting himself in opposition. Yes, he challenges the government on areas of disagreement, but on this issue, where there continues to be a consensus between the Conservative and Labour leaderships, he behaves in a constructive way.

Both these Sunak lessons would do the same thing: they would tangibly demonstrate that government and opposition have noticed that the UK faces a major crisis and that they need to change their approach accordingly.

Further reading links

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Chatham House director Bronwen Maddox argues that more borrowing may be the answer in a time when Europe can no longer rely for its defence on the US.

Now try this

I am enjoying Lauren Mayberry’s debut solo record, Vicious Creature, a great deal.

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