Keir Starmer's choice: Fixing Brexit or fixing Trump

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has spent part of today on the deck of the Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales, at anchor off the coast of its home port of Portsmouth.

Surrounded by the noise of jet engines and helicopter motors might feel like peace and quiet – it’s the only place he can get some relief from the competing global pressures pulling at his government.

On one side, the UK’s relationship with the EU, and the negotiations that are quietly and in private, reaching a climax over how to resolve the problems caused by Brexit.

On the other side, the much louder negotiations taking place in public between the UK and Donald Trump’s US, to limit the fallout from his trade war with the world.

Brexit has already depressed economic growth, while according to the latest forecasts, Trump’s tariffs will slash it further. Fixing one problem probably blocks a solution to the other, and within each negotiation are conflicting interests that pose political risks to Starmer’s struggling Labour government.

Let’s take Europe first. After hitching a helicopter ride off the deck of the Prince of Wales, the PM will fly to London to meet the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who is in town for a major summit on energy security.

It’s believed that an agreement with Brussels to ease UK trade with the EU is close. One sticking point will be Europe’s demand for a youth mobility scheme, to give young people some of the lost benefits of free movement and the Erasmus university exchange scheme, which no longer extends to the UK.

Parties like the SNP and the Liberal Democrats would love to see a youth mobility scheme, and have been calling for one since Keir Starmer was elected; they’ve been joined today by dozens of Labour MPs and peers, including five Scottish Labour MPs, who have signed a public letter backing a youth mobility scheme.

But the government is wary of anything that gives Nigel Farage’s Reform Party an opportunity to claim a Brexit betrayal over immigration. And that’s before you consider the further concessions that are also likely over EU access to, and control over, British fishing waters. That’s expected to be the trade in exchange for closer security cooperation between the UK and Brussels, including the opportunity for British manufacturers to benefit from a big boost in European defence spending.

To get trade flowing freely again with Europe, the UK Government is seeking a veterinary agreement that would eliminate some of the checks to animal products. But that puts at risk the other deal that Keir Starmer wants – with Donald Trump’s White House.

Negotiating with the self-proclaimed maestro of the Art of the Deal isn’t easy. There’s a question over whether Washington even wants a deal to remove the 10% across the board tariffs, or the 25% on aluminium and steel products, as well as cars.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been in the US this week and has offered to lower the UK’s tariffs on American cars as an opening bid. However, the Trump administration wants much more: access to the British market for American agricultural produce, which could threaten British farming; and a rebalancing of trade in pharmaceuticals, which could disrupt one of the UK’s successful export industries.

Striking deals with both Brussels and Washington on trade and the economy is enough of a balancing act; that’s before you consider the parallel high-wire that is global security in the age of Trump – which is why Keir Starmer finds himself on the deck of an aircraft carrier in the first place, as it sets off for the Pacific.

To cover the cost of America’s withdrawal from global security, from the battlefields of Ukraine to the Taiwan Strait, the UK needs economic growth. Finding it means letting some people down.