Inside Starmer’s plan to woo Trump with a defense spending surprise

LONDON — Sometimes the best gifts come as a surprise. 

Keir Starmer kept his plan to pump billions of extra pounds into Britain’s defenses such a tight secret that not even the country’s traditional allies in America knew it was coming. 

And that was partly the point. 

The U.K. prime minister lands in Washington on Wednesday night for what may be the most important diplomatic mission of his career: to convince Donald Trump Britain is serious about carrying the burden of defending itself — and Ukraine — and that America shouldn’t walk away. 

Trump has spent his first month back in power tearing into America’s allies in the West, threatening to cut security ties with European governments who don’t spend enough on their own militaries, and siding with Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin in peace talks on Ukraine. 

That shock to the transatlantic alliance led Britain’s prime minister to bring forward the dramatic decision to hike the U.K.’s defense budget — to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2027, from 2.3 percent now. 

“[Starmer] needed something for Trump,” according to one person familiar with the matter. “The U.K. was told that fulfilling its desired bridge function with Europe would require it to lift defense spending quickly, and play a leading role in haranguing other European partners to do the same.”

This article is based on interviews with six British officials and several others. They were granted anonymity to reveal the secret deliberations that led to the defense investment, which the U.K. has described as the biggest since the end of the Cold War.

Early signs are that Tuesday’s announcement — paid for in classic Trumpian style by slashing funds for international aid — has gone down well in Washington. 

In a private call moments after the news broke, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told his British counterpart John Healey that the spending increase was “excellent” and "a great leadership step," according to a person with knowledge of the discussion.

That reaction will be seen in Downing Street as a vindication of Starmer’s decision to announce the extra cash just before his White House meeting Thursday. Starmer wants to be a “bridge” between European countries and Trump — and the president’s sudden hostility toward Ukraine and Europe reinforced the urgency of his task. “The last few weeks have accelerated my thinking," Starmer said. 

Element of surprise

For maximum impact, the plan had to be kept secret. 

Starmer had been privately discussing the plan with his finance minister, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, for weeks, officials said. But even Britain’s most vital allies — not to mention its own Cabinet ministers — were not told until the last possible moment.

Trump’s team was only informed about the spending plan Tuesday, two senior U.K. officials told POLITICO. One said the White House was informed at around the time Starmer made his unexpected announcement to parliament, or just before. Healey, the U.K. defense secretary, rushed straight from Starmer’s statement in parliament to call his U.S. counterpart, Hegseth, with the news. 

Even when a tight-knit group of U.K. ministers met secretly in Downing Street on Monday night, they did not discuss the defense spending announcement. The “mini-Cabinet” — which included Starmer, Reeves, Healey, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden and No. 10 national security adviser Jonathan Powell — considered other policy areas ahead of the U.S. trip. 

Starmer only discussed the defense spending rise with select ministers one-on-one, before all Cabinet ministers were led into a reading room Tuesday morning and asked to approve the deal. The group of people in the know was kept “incredibly tight,” a third U.K. official added. 

France was also left in the dark: Starmer spoke to Macron by phone about the details only once they had been made public, despite the fact that the two leaders had been working closely on support for Ukraine. 

Macron beat Starmer to the Oval Office by three days, seeking to rekindle his own “bromance” with Trump in Washington on Monday, as part of the European charm offensive designed to get the president on side. 

At a press conference in the White House, the French leader referred to Trump as “dear Donald” as they reminisced about sharing a dinner at the Eiffel Tower. While Macron left Washington without securing the iron-clad security guarantees Ukraine wants from the U.S., the mood was positive and he took trouble to thank Trump for his “leadership.” 

Starmer has to follow that act with his own courtship of the president. The British and French leaders have been in close contact about Ukraine peace planning in the Trump era, and have drawn up a blueprint to send their countries’ troops to enforce a permanent truce in the future.

This new international dynamic requires a rethink on defense, an issue all European governments are also grappling with. One of the two senior U.K. officials quoted above said: “People should not see this decision as simply about getting through one meeting on Thursday. This is a fundamental shift in the way the government is operating on defense and security. It’s a recognition of the moment we’re in.” 

Fury at aid spending cut 

While the defense spending was broadly welcomed by military figures and security hawks, the aid cut — from 0.5 to 0.3 percent of gross national income, on top of cuts during the COVID pandemic — provoked outcry from charities and some figures in Starmer’s Labour Party.

One adviser in international development said the sector had been given “zero” warning and received “no assurances yet as far as we are aware” over the future of any projects. CARE International UK’s CEO Helen McEachern said the “short-sighted and reactionary decision” would “endanger the lives of the world’s most vulnerable.”

Multiple officials declined to say when the Foreign Office — which oversees aid spending and so will bear the brunt of the cut — was looped in on conversations, but suggested they only reached their final form in recent days.

Starmer said it was “not a decision that I as a British Labour prime minister would have wanted to take,” and denied at a No. 10 press conference that he was aping the politics of Trump’s U.K. ally, the right-wing politician Nigel Farage. “Nigel Farage is fawning over Putin. That is not patriotism,” he said. 

Despite the backlash, aides hope the announcement will mark Starmer out as a leader in his meetings with Trump.

A U.K. official said the rise — which Starmer described as the "biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the end of the Cold War” — was “definitely” a case of Britain trying to lead the charge for defense spending among European allies. “That is how Keir sees it … let’s grab this, seize it, and get there.”

The art of the deal

There are prizes aplenty if the U.K. can win Trump’s ear — and not get knocked off course by a stray presidential remark. 

Britain is pushing for closer trade ties, including a proposed pact on AI and critical technologies as part of a wider economic deal. 

“This is not a classic free trade agreement,” one British official said. “We have a close and trusted relationship with the U.S. in national security matters, including deep technological ties. We want to extend this to joint working in other critical technologies. We can win the technology race much better by working together than apart.”

Starmer is also expected to appeal for Britain to be spared U.S. import tariffs, arguing that the two nations already have a balanced trading relationship. “There is also time to negotiate before any tariffs kick in during April,” they added. “We don’t want a U.S. trade war with allies when we are being asked to step up militarily and close ranks against China.”

But it will come at a price — obsequious diplomacy. While Starmer has at times contradicted Trump, making clear that Kyiv did not start the war with Russia, he side-stepped questions about Monday’s U.S. decision to side with Russia in a United Nations resolution on Ukraine’s future.

Mason Boycott-Owen contributed reporting from London. Eli Stokols contributed reporting from Washington DC. Clea Caulcutt contributed reporting from Paris.