3 wins Keir Starmer needs from Donald Trump in Scotland

How’s your golf swing, prime minister?

Keir Starmer heads into a meeting with Donald Trump Monday with his team straining to manage expectations about what’s likely to be achieved.

Trump’s trip to his Turnberry and Aberdeen golf resorts is being billed as a chance for the U.S. president to focus less on world affairs and more on his personal empire.

But No. 10 Downing Street does at least spy a chance for some real relationship-building, and Starmer will be under pressure to raise plenty of hot-button topics when the two sit down.

The U.K. prime minister’s priorities will include keeping the U.S. president’s newfound support for Ukraine going, keeping pressure on the U.S. to reduce outstanding tariffs on the U.K., and shoring up Trump’s commitment to NATO and the AUKUS submarine deal. The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza will also be high on the agenda as international pressure on Israel mounts.

The U.K. side finds it hard to predict Trump’s next move at the best of moments — and this time he’s on a golfing holiday. A U.K. government adviser, who spoke on condition of anonymity, described the trip as more of a “staging post” ahead of talks on tariffs at other ministerial levels and Trump’s Sept. 17-19 full state visit to the U.K.

Nevertheless, here’s what the strait-laced Starmer will be hoping for out his time with the mercurial U.S. leader.

1) Face time to work the special relationship

Starmer — whom colleagues describe as buttoned-up at work but personable in private — has worked hard with aides on showing his more relaxed side around Trump. POLITICO reported in March that Starmer had WhatsApped the president. (No. 10 declines to confirm the existence of such messages, giving only carefully agreed readouts of formal calls.) Starmer broke his usual character to indulge in theatrics during his visit to the White House in February — whisking out a letter from King Charles inviting Trump to pay a state visit.

Starmer has also taken informal, spontaneous calls from the president — including when Trump’s special envoy to the U.K., Mark Burnett, handed him the phone midway through a meal with Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney at Downing Street. On another occasion, Starmer took a call from Trump midway through watching a football match.

But such spontaneity tends to be on the president’s terms, not Starmer’s.

The golfing visit is “an opportunity for the PM to build personal rapport with Trump,” said one U.K. government adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They have a good relationship but this is where Starmer will need to shine in an informal setting. He’s good with the formalities around him.”

2) Progress on the U.K.-U.S. trade deal

While all eyes are on the big-ticket U.S.-EU trade deal struck Sunday night, Britain’s “historic” Economic Prosperity Deal with Trump still has plenty of kinks left to iron out, months after it was struck.

The U.K. prime minister’s priorities will include keeping the U.S. president’s newfound support for Ukraine going. | Pool Photo by Andy Rain via EPA

If London had its way, Britain would see steel duties lifted and a reduction to the blanket 10 percent tariff slapped on most U.K. goods — but that’s a big ask.

The prospect of getting more trade wins out of Donald Trump is decidedly mixed with no resolution yet in sight, multiple government figures said. There’s now a growing acceptance in government that getting steel tariffs down from 25 percent to zero is at least “challenging” — and at worst very difficult.

Despite good will on both sides, there are still lots of complicated bits to untangle before the deal can be struck, including how to navigate U.S. “melt and pour rules” that require steel imported to the U.S. to be manufactured in its country of origin.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, as hopes grow that Britain could avoid tariffs on pharmaceutical products — which Trump had threatened to impose as soon as the start of August. A U.K. government figure said a deal on pharmaceuticals was “much more likely” than immediate progress on steel or the blanket 10 percent reciprocal tariffs. If it comes off it would be a good-news story for the government and the industry, which contributes significantly to U.K. GDP.

3) The chance to keep the president’s mind on foreign affairs

The meeting will also be a chance for Starmer to attempt to pull Trump’s focus back to two long-running crises where the U.S. can play a critical role: Ukraine and Gaza.

Kyiv’s allies were heartened when Trump agreed a plan with NATO’s Mark Rutte at the White House to send more weapons to Ukraine funded by Europeans. However, the president’s boldest promise on this front — a pledge that “we will send them Patriots [missiles], which they desperately need” — appears to be stalled.

The German government is particularly frustrated that Trump has so far refused to send any of his more than 60 Patriots over, and Berlin’s lobbying has fallen on deaf ears up to this point. A Western official said “it’s all still very much being worked out” but that the U.K. is part of the effort to turn the White House’s commitment into action.

No.10 said Sunday night that Starmer — who is under intense pressure at home on the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza — will raise with Trump “what more can be done to secure the ceasefire urgently, bring an end to the unspeakable suffering and starvation in Gaza and free the hostages who have been held so cruelly for so long.”

London has been trying to coordinate with Paris and Berlin on its response to the famine-like conditions now facing the people of Gaza, aiming to pile pressure on Israel to allow access to water and food for the civilian population there. But, despite mounting calls in his own party to act, Starmer has not followed French President Emmanuel Macron’s vow to recognize the Palestinian state. Trump’s brusque reaction to Macron’s move this weekend shows just how delicate the balancing act is that Starmer will need to perform.

The Starmer-Trump meeting meanwhile comes just days after the U.K. defense and foreign secretaries hot-footed it to Australia to demonstrate their steadfast commitment to the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines deal, a trilateral initiative with the U.S. aimed at providing a bulwark against China.

Starmer’s government, like the administration in Canberra, is keen to show willing on the pact after Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby, a past critic of AUKUS, launched a surprise review of the treaty back in the spring. Warm words on the defense set-up, like the ones Starmer gleaned from Trump at the G7 in June, would be a win.