The British Foreign Office set a low bar for Sir Keir Starmer’s trip to America—Don’t fall out with King Donald. He succeeded.

That is not to say that substantive issues were not discussed. They were and included:

Tariffs – and the possibility, nay probability,  of reviving the Johnson era US-UK trade deal that could exempt Britain from the crippling tariffs that Trump has threatened to impose on the EU.

The Chagos Islands – Trump is inclined to go along with the British position.

And Ukraine – On this top of the agenda item Sir Keir failed. Trump was immovable – No backstop. No security guarantees and total confidence in the honesty of fellow dissembler Vladimir Putin.

The tete a tete started with a cringe-making pantomime when in front of the world’s media the prime minister reached into his suit pocket and drew out a letter from King Charles III.

It was the expected invitation to Trump to make an historic second state visit to Buckingham Palace.

Royal Family fan Donald evinced childlike surprise and delight at the expected letter and the friendly tone was set for the private talks in the Oval Office. The first box was ticked.

An Anglo-American trade deal has long been one of Trump’s priorities. Not because of any love for the royal family or the homeland of his mother. No, Donald Trump wants a trade deal with Britain because he hates the EU. It is a threat to American trade hegemony. Trump wants to encourage its break-up and insure that Britain does not return to the European fold by pulling it closer to America.

In any upcoming trade talks the British public will be focused on chlorine-washed chicken, hormone-fed beef and higher prices for NHS drugs. The attention of Trump’s negotiators will be on coordinating regulations across a wide-range of goods and services to make it more difficult for Britain to negotiate re-entry into the European single market and/or customs union.

The Chagos Islands dispute is a colonial hangover. It is centred on Diego Garcia which Mauritius says is theirs. The International Court of Justice, the UN General Assembly, International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the African Union and a host of other international organisations and countries agree with Mauritius.

The problem is that the island is a strategically-placed military base with a major air base, deep-water anchorage and communications hub for the Indo-Pacific region. The island is owned by Britain and leased to the US until 2036. Since 2022 Mauritius and the UK have been negotiating the future of the islands with Britain insisting that any agreement must include the continued presence of the American military.

Ensuring American support for the British position of helping America was low-hanging diplomatic fruit, but allowed the Foreign Office and Downing Street to claim a win.

More difficult was Ukraine. Sir Keir flew to Washington to repeat the position outlined by French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the week: A ceasefire with European and British peacekeeping forces backed up by American security guarantees. Trump has no problem with European peacekeepers (although it is noteworthy that Vladimir Putin has vehemently ruled it out). It is the all-important back-up where he and Europe part company.

Trump maintains that American miners extracting rare earth minerals will be a sufficient back-up. That Russia would not dare attack while American miners are on Ukrainian soil. There are a number of problems with that position. The miners would not be armed and they are not soldiers. Putin could simply order his troops not to bother them and Trump could withdraw them if they were in danger.

Finally, as of this writing, there is no mining agreement between the US and Ukraine. That may quickly change because Volodomyr Zelensky is flying to Washington as I type with the expressed purpose of signing such an agreement, or, at least a heads of agreement. But the problem is that Trump and Zelensky are approaching the signing ceremony from two very different starting positions.

Trump wants Ukraine’s mineral rights as payment for past military aid but without any guarantee of future American support. Zelensky is reluctantly prepared to sign away his country’s natural resources in return for past military support AND future military support.

A probable trade deal is good news but only if it does not move Britain further away from its near neighbours in Europe. Support for the British position on the Chagos Islands was a given. The apparent personal rapport is important, especially when one half of the relationship is totally unpredictable.  But failure to move Trump on Ukraine will have repercussions which will be felt for decades and means that success in other areas pales into insignificance.

* Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice. He also contributes to “The New World” magazine and lectures on world affairs. He is the author of “America Made in Britain,” two editions of “The Encyclopaedia of the Cold War” and “The Falklands Crisis.”