Why Conceding to Trump Didn’t Buy the UK Any Safety
From Greenland to the NHS, economic coercion only teaches one lesson: it works. - A long read
This morning I made a post on BlueSky in which I called Keir Starmer a doormat. Not directly, I was obviously a bit more oblique than that, but the point is that I did jump on a headline, and my first thought (some may say an intrusive one) was to shout “DOORMAT!” at a Prime Minister that is really between the proverbial rock and hard place.
I ended up taking down that post. I didn’t do so because I suddenly developed a spiritual devotion to Keir Starmer’s feelings (I did not), but because it was snide. And a bit sloppy.
What I had done there was latch onto a vibe - I went for feelings, not facts, and missed the diagnosis. And if we’re going to be adults about this - however reluctantly that may be in my case - then the gods-honest truth is that my irritation that caused me to blurt out that post wasn’t really with Starmer at all.
It was about the fact that this is not new, and that it’s become an increasingly noticeable pattern since the geriatric gameshow host and felon Donald J. Trump that everyone is being bullied. Coerced. Manipulated. Constantly. The EU, the UK, South Africa - any country that catches Trump’s eye becomes a target.
The bullying and coercion alone would have been enough, but there’s something that makes it fully stick in my craw - it’s the fact that it’s happening after we’d already conceded. The second state visit, the flattery, the deal-making, the “calm dialogue”, the constant and endless careful phrasing that’s designed to avoid (at all costs possible) bruising an ego the size of a medium sized continent.
The fact that none of what was understandably done to keep the peace has even touched sides. That it’s all been a complete and total waste of the UK’s time, dignity and eroding standing in the world. That we’ve debased ourselves on the global stage to keep an eighty year old, orange toddler from throwing his toys out of the cot yet again.
And we should, very frankly, have seen this coming - from a country mile. Because ultimately, appeasement simply was never going to buy us safety when the threat itself is the point.
To update everyone on the context, though I’m sure most people will already be aware, this weekend Trump threatened additional tariffs on the UK and a cluster of EU countries (all NATO members, just by-the-by) in an attempt to force Denmark to let the US buy Greenland. The basic details are that the new tariffs (at a rate of 10%) will come into effect from the 1st of February, escalating again in June if Trump’s demands aren’t met and will then remain in place until such a time as he gets what he wants. That, on its own, should tell you everything you need to know. They won’t stay in place “until a fair arrangement is reached” or “until this dispute is resolved.”
No, no. It’s until the countries in question comply.
Which, to a very large extent, is why my framing of the UK as a doormat, satisfying as it was in that particular moment, doesn’t quite fit. Because ultimately, Starmer could stand tall in a press-conference saying that we will retaliate, he could do backflips into the Thames, he could even go so far as going back to DC and kissing Trump’s bright orange ring until it’s gleaming, and not a single one of those things would change the underlying dynamic.
The dynamic that we are now dealing with an administration and its Dear Leader that has turned tariffs into an all-purpose punishment tool - a way of not correcting imbalances or protecting markets, but as a tool of domination.
Once you reconcile yourself to that framework - the framework of “might is right” even when it comes to what is in effect a market instrument - the last year or so of the UK’s strategy looks less like weakness and more like the wrong understanding of what’s going on.
Last year, the UK made what in a sane world would be called a “rational decision.”
When Orangina and his henchman began their roll out of tariff measures across the globe, the EU, on the one hand, leaned into retaliation and collective leverage - to greater or lesser success, depending on how you measure these things.
We, on the other hand, tried a different tack - keep things cool, negotiate carve-outs, protect jobs, avoid escalation at all cost and preserve the idea that “we can be the reasonable adults in the room.” To be fair to Starmer and his team, this approach did produce what were a few tangible wins, especially in the automotive and aerospace sectors with the Economic Prosperity Deal, however imperfect and quota heavy those were.
In December last year though, there was a point where the US saw us being reasonable, and decided to push a bit more - and this was specifically with the pharmaceutical agreement that allows us, as the UK, tariff free access to the US market for pharma-exports, in exchange for major changes in UK medicines policy.
It was at this point in time that the “appeasement” question stopped being rhetorical and became material.
This pharma deal, it turned out, wasn’t a friendly handshake, or a win for us in any form - it involves committing the NHS to paying far more for medicines over time and changing the internal mechanisms and logic for how we judge value. NICE (National Institute for Clinical Excellence) thresholds were increased and rebate structures were shifted - both of which are not nebulous policy tweaks, but choices with real opportunity costs inside a health service that now runs on barely controlled scarcity, rubber bands and fairly tattered hope.
It was sold to us by the government as creating jobs, investment and life science competitiveness - but what it really was, and what The Guardian aptly described it as, is a deal that’s likely to cost the NHS billions more per year by the mid 2030s.
Whether you think of these trade-off as justified I suppose depends on your priors, and there’s a whole other article for that, but the important part for today is that the UK committed itself to paying a very large premium for stability - and this weekend showed that stability was never on offer. At all.
Which is where my point of frustration sits so incredibly deeply in this whole situation. The UK did what grown-up countries do - it tried to manage risk, negotiate predictability, be pragmatic in a world where pragmatism is supposed to be rewarded.
And it didn’t work. Because the rules have changed. Tariffs, in the context of Donald J. Trump, are no longer economic instruments - they’re expressive. Signals of power. The new tool to reinforce that power sits in the US, and we are all expected to cower, ally or not. The punishment has become the message, and woe unto you who does not understand that.
The greatest proof of that punishment mindset came to light just this morning, when messages from Trump to Norway’s Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, surfaced and gave us a real look into the psyche of the now leader of the free world. The message read:
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
There is every temptation, deep inside me, when looking at the behaviour we’re seeing from Trump, to keep asking whether a different tone earlier would have helped rein in this behaviour. A firmer statement. A softer one. More charm. Less provocation. There’s this deep want that if we had only used the right combination of firmness, diplomacy, a bit of deference and maybe a better overall deal, that all of this could have been avoided.
This message to Støre puts that to bed.
In the US, we are no longer dealing with an ally, negotiating partner or even a particularly coherent grievance. We are now dealing with a country led by a man who is openly threatening economic punishment against what would most likely be called one of their most polite allies because he didn’t receive a Nobel Peace Prize. A prize he neither earned nor clearly understands, and because another country happens to sit on a peace of land he wants, he is apocalyptically throwing his toys out of his pram again.
There is no hidden logic for anyone to decode, nor a clever strategy that we’re not seeing. There is just pure impulse, resentment and power exercised for its own sake. Our illusion of control in this situation is just that - an illusion.
We cannot control this situation. There is no clever angle for Starmer to find, no different approach that may have worked or a sequence of flattery, restraint or reason that would have produced this outcome. It was always going to come to this point, because you cannot negotiate with someone who is annexing a territory because he didn’t get a bauble that he didn’t deserve.
We have to admit to ourselves that we are simply unable to stabilise our relationship with the United States while the only way that it knows how to communicate is through grievance, imperialism and punishment.
This post has turned a bit darker than I intended.
My intention was to have a lesson here in that you cannot deal with a coercer by giving in to coercion, because the coercer will only learn that coercion works, and you’ll never be able to get out of that cycle.
But, there was supposed to be something after that. An exit plan. A solution. A suggestion for a strategy of some sort. But I, for one, cannot think of anything.
I don’t have a neat ending for this, and I don’t think there is one.
All I know is that once you accept coercion as the price of peace, you stop buying peace at all. You just rent temporary silence - until the next demand arrives.
And it always does.
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This is very, very strong. It’s the first piece I’ve seen in this whole Greenland–tariff–Nobel fiasco that actually diagnoses the dynamic rather than vibing at it. It’s sober, grown-up, strategically literate, and bleak in exactly the way the situation warrants.
What makes this moment so unnerving is that every instinct we developed in the post-Cold War period tells us that order is maintained through incentives, diplomacy and mutual benefit. That model collapses when one of the poles of the system operates on humiliation, extraction and punishment. The UK’s strategy wasn’t cowardice — it was built for a world that no longer exists. Appeasement is only a strategy when the other side can be appeased. When the demand is the domination itself, there’s no “headroom” to buy peace, because peace was never on the menu.
So where does that leave us? Not in a debate about tone, or diplomatic craft, or where Starmer sits on the calcium-to-spine spectrum, but in a much harder transition: how to behave as a medium power in a world where the hegemon has become a coercer, not a guarantor. Europe has some tools. The UK fewer. None of them are pleasant, quick or cheap. Collectivisation of leverage is one, but requires political will we’ve spent years burning for domestic pantomime. Decoupling is another, but decoupling from Washington is a geopolitical quadruple bypass — no one survives that unaided.
Which brings us to the part nobody wants to say out loud: there is no clever workaround. No angle. No magic technocratic marinade you can rub into the situation to make it tender and cooperative. Trump’s America is not a partner you negotiate with, it is a storm you endure, and you build enough internal scaffolding that the building is still standing when it passes. That’s the “strategy,” such as it is. Not winning — surviving.
And that’s why the doormat metaphor ultimately fails. Doormats choose to lie flat. Britain isn’t choosing. It’s being stood on.
I understand Starmer’s rational but recent events crowned by that letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister show once and for all there is no point in negotiating with Trump. The UK must quickly align with Europe in general and the EU in particular to protect ourselves from the insane actions of the Tangerine Turd in the White House.