Former Downing Street officials tell POLITICO how U.K. prime ministers tried to play the TV show host at his own game … without getting fired.
LONDON — Few things in politics are as tricky as meeting Donald Trump. A half-hour phone call is one of them.
Just like other world leaders, Keir Starmer is — still — waiting in line for his first call with the newly returned United States president. The United Kingdom’s prime minister likes to point out he bagged a two-hour chicken dinner with Trump in September, and two pre-inauguration calls. But he’d best be on his guard.
Whether it was fastidious, buttoned-up Theresa May or irreverent Boris Johnson — Britain’s two prime ministers during Trump’s first term — calls with the president used to be box office events at No. 10 Downing Street.
Civil servants and special advisers would gather to listen in on the conversation unfolding in their boss’s study, either from No. 10’s secure basement room or the prime minister’s private office one door away.
“The calls were extraordinary … brilliant,” recalled one former Downing Street official, who — like five others POLITICO spoke to for this piece — was granted anonymity to talk candidly. “Everyone was in there with tears [of] laughter because they were hilarious.”
“The agenda would quite quickly fall by the wayside,” admitted a second former No. 10 official. A third added: “They were never what you wanted them to be about, broadly. If you were calling about trade or Israel or something, it would always go off beam.”
Former No. 10 officials describe Trump careening onto his pet issues, such as golf, Scotland (home to his golf courses) and wind turbines — the latter of which he brought up again with Starmer before Christmas, according to The Times. Occasionally he might veer into a story that was before the courts, a traditional no-go zone for British ministers.
Trump would even, said the third ex-official, ask after Queen Elizabeth II’s health.
Any leader talking to Trump needs to be “straight to the point, robust and openly transactional,” this person added. “I think I would only go in with one or maximum two asks, and count myself lucky if I managed to mention both in any substantive way.”
Mr. Rules
All this presents a challenge to Keir Starmer — a straight-laced former prosecutor whom a Labour colleague memorably called “Mr Rules” in 2022.
Starmer has insisted he had a “really good meeting” with Trump in September and promised to “take our partnership to the next level.” Downing Street has pitched publicly for another face-to-face “as soon as possible,” with U.K. officials hoping the prime minister and Foreign Secretary David Lammy could jointly visit Washington, D.C. in Trump’s first few weeks.
Yet Starmer will be jostling for position with right-wing leaders more in tune with Trump’s politics — Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Javier Milei both attended the inauguration — and those unburdened by disputes with the new administration. Trump’s team attacked members of Starmer’s Labour Party for helping the Democrats in the 2024 election, while his ally Elon Musk has called for the U.S. to “liberate” the U.K. from Starmer over grooming gangs.
Then there’s the character clash.
Starmer has railed against populism and said in 2023 that he “loathed” his predecessor Boris Johnson, who had “no principles … no integrity.” Yet it was Johnson who struck up a better rapport with Trump than May, according to four former No. 10 officials, including the three quoted above.
Trump “absolutely bulldozed her” in phone calls, said the first ex-official. “She had absolutely no idea how to deal with somebody like Trump. It was a vicar’s daughter we were sending off to deal with a very, very hard-nosed, ruthless businessman who was there to get the best deal for Americans … there was more than a whiff of misogyny.”
Trump would use phone calls to vent his opinions on other world leaders — even disparaging May while he spoke to Johnson, a fourth former Downing Street official suggested: “In subsequent calls when she was no longer prime minister, he wasn’t particularly respectful of her.”
By contrast, Johnson, the first former official added, would “obsequiously flatter Trump,” telling him to ignore the “naysayers” such as London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Johnson would WhatsApp directly with members of Trump’s team and helped persuade the president to pull out of an interview with TV presenter Piers Morgan, the ex-official added. “It was interesting, because Boris never liked Trump. I think he thought he was vulgar and a bit of an idiot. But he certainly played him incredibly well.”
Even Johnson’s flattery wouldn’t always work, though. He failed to persuade Trump of the merits of letting Chinese firm Huawei help build the U.K.’s 5G phone network. Britain eventually U-turned and banned it.
Knocked off course
Starmer is starting from a tricky place. Aside from Musk’s endless brickbats and Labour’s run-in with the Republican Party, there are tensions over incoming Ambassador to D.C. Peter Mandelson, a Labour grandee who has previously criticized Trump’s stance on Beijing.
The leak of details from the president-elect’s call with Starmer on Dec. 18 — including a tangent about birds dying in wind turbines — has done nothing to help relations with some around Trump, a person familiar with transatlantic conversations said.
U.K. officials are straining to avoid further leaks, including by keeping a tight number of officials on future calls.
With May, the relationship struggled to get off the ground because she and Trump took different stances on Brexit. Starmer, who is pursuing a “reset” with the European Union, could face a similar gulf. “Don’t underestimate or seek to downplay his antipathy toward the EU,” a fifth ex-official said. “He is very focused on the trade imbalance, and thinks Brussels — Germany in particular — has been screwing America for years. Be ready for the moment he asks the U.K. to choose between either the U.S. or EU.”
Even with the best relationship, there will always be times when Trump’s style blows Britain’s plans off course. A sixth ex-official recalled a time the then-president said a terror suspect had been “in the sights of Scotland Yard,” earning a rebuke from May. It was “catastrophically wrong,” the former official added.
Half an hour with Trump
Britain’s new government will be aware of the challenges. Some U.K. officials have been picking the brains of people who were around in Trump’s first term, and Starmer already has experience under his belt — his most recent call with Trump lasted a solid half hour, two people with knowledge of it said.
The opposition Conservative Party is also studying its notes, with leader Kemi Badenoch having exchanged WhatsApps in recent months with Vice President JD Vance.
Starmer’s first call now that Trump is in office will be critical. The president will likely “try [to] push some boundaries and tests and just see, try to work out the man that he’s dealing with,” said the fourth former official.
Of course there are ways to get in the president’s good books, and his allies are not always like-minded. Labour has been studying how the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe managed to get close enough to Trump to secure a trade deal, while even May earned moments of praise — helped partly by wheeling out Britain’s royal splendor and rich history.
Using the trappings of the British state will ease the path, but won’t always work. When arranging Trump’s 2018 visit to the U.K., the third ex-official recalled, “he basically was not interested in anything we had to offer.”
No. 10 aides talked about bringing a troop capability demonstration to wherever Trump was in Britain — even flying to him — so he wouldn’t have to travel, the ex-official added: “We went through a huge list of shiny things to show him … the one thing he wanted to do was meet the queen [the late Elizabeth II], and that was it. There was nothing else he wanted to do.”
It’s possible that Starmer, a self-confessed “ruthless” politician who is warmer in private than in public and has crushed a recently dominant left flank in his own party, will find a rhythm with the ultimate dealmaker.
The first ex-official, however, wasn’t convinced: “Keir would be at home in the diplomacy of 2002. The rules-based order, all very sensible. It is Trump’s world now.”
The art of the deal
One piece of advice for No. 10 aides — read Trump’s book, “The Art of the Deal.”
With Trump, the normal “sherpa” process — in which officials work out exactly what each leader will say and the meeting itself is mostly a formality — does not apply. Nor do the usual rules of the No. 10 press office, which sometimes prewrites parts of the official “readout” of a call between leaders before it has even happened. With Trump, there was no point.
“He sees himself as the dealmaker-in-chief, and that, in some ways, limits the political usefulness of some of the other people on his staff,” said the second former official. The ex-official encouraged regular face time with Trump as the way to get things done — especially if the president’s aides don’t know what’s on his mind.
The “enormous churn of key personnel” in the White House was a problem in Trump’s first term, the second ex-official added — including former national security adviser John Bolton.
“The bilateral relationship between our national security adviser and Trump’s at the time became less and less valuable, because he was not necessarily always in agreement with what the president was proposing, particularly on issues like Iran,” the ex-official said. “Their NSA was saying, ‘I cannot tell you with confidence what I expect him to do.’”
If all else fails, there are some basic principles to follow.
“Always treat Trump with respect,” the fifth ex-official said. “Yes, he will say some mad or unpredictable things, but there’s almost always an underlying argument or basis for a negotiation.”
And if that doesn’t work, there’s an even simpler fallback: “[Learn about] his U.K. golf courses. He will talk about them, so do a couple of minutes of homework on how they’re doing. It’ll go a long way.”
