Trump Broke It. Now Starmer's Figuring Out How to Lead Without Him.

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Keir Starmer is learning the hardest lesson of being a British Prime Minister in 2025: you can’t build strategy around a man who watches UFC fights while your diplomacy burns.

Last week was the week the Trump-Starmer relationship stopped being a bromance and became a reckoning. The UK government shelved its Chagos Islands deal after Trump opposition. OpenAI paused a data centre project that was supposed to make Britain an AI superpower. And somewhere in Islamabad, Starmer’s diplomats watched Jed Vance walk away from 21 hours of Iran negotiations with nothing—while the President-elect watched fighting in Miami and declared victory anyway because, as he put it, “we win, regardless.”

That last bit isn’t just casual cruelty. That’s a man telling you the actual nature of his negotiating framework: outcomes don’t matter. Dominance does. And if you’re not in the room where the dominance is being displayed, you’re already losing.

Here’s what just happened to the UK in seven days:

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The Chagos Collapse Nobody Saw Coming

The Chagos Islands deal looked like a win. The UK government had negotiated the return of the islands to Mauritius while maintaining a military base there—a rare feat of getting something and keeping something in post-colonial diplomacy. It was messy, contested, and probably necessary for the UK’s position in the Indian Ocean. It was also deeply unpopular with the Trump team.

Trump’s opposition killed it. The UK government says they haven’t “entirely abandoned” the agreement. That’s what you say when you’ve abandoned something but want to preserve the possibility of pretending you didn’t. Officials ran out of time. Which is diplomatic shorthand for: we realized the incoming administration would make this impossible, so we quit before we got humiliated.

Compare this to 2021. Back then, the UK could negotiate post-Brexit trade arrangements with one eye on Washington and one eye on Brussels. You had leverage through that split. Now? You’ve got one eye on Mar-a-Lago and one eye on your own cabinet room. The leverage went away.

The AI Dream, Deferred Indefinitely

OpenAI pausing the UK data centre project was the canary in the coal mine, except nobody noticed because we’re all too busy watching Iran.

Starmer had positioned Britain as the place where artificial intelligence would be built and governed responsibly. Rishi Sunak got this ball rolling. Starmer inherited it and actually owned it. Tech investment. Good jobs. Leadership in the global economy. OpenAI was going to be the flagship announcement that said: Britain’s not just a place where old institutions exist; we’re building the future here.

The pause happened because of “energy costs and regulation.” Read that as: the Trump administration signaled that any tech company that doesn’t build in America first, expand in America second, and ask permission from Mar-a-Lago third, is making bad choices.

Here’s what bothers me about this: it’s not even coordinated pressure. It’s just the ambient temperature of Washington right now. Companies don’t need Trump to call them and threaten them. They just read the room and adjust. That’s actually more dangerous than explicit coercion because it’s self-executing.

Iran: The Moment Starmer Realized He’s Not at the Table

The Iran talks collapsed with Vance walking away. The UK didn’t even have meaningful leverage in those negotiations—that was all US and intermediaries. But that’s almost the point. Starmer flew to the Middle East for a three-day visit saying the current ceasefire is “fragile” and that the Iran conflict “will define us for a generation.”

It will. And he has almost no control over whether it escalates or stabilizes.

Vance walked out because 21 hours of talking produced nothing. Trump, watching UFC in Miami, said he didn’t care whether a deal happened. The destruction of a major diplomatic track happened without British fingerprints on it because British fingerprints don’t matter anymore in the Trump-era Middle East calculation.

This is the moment Starmer confronted something deeper than any individual policy failure: he’s leading a country of 67 million people in a world where the decisions that matter most are being made by people who don’t think about Britain as anything except a potential problem or a useful ally-of-convenience.

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The Russia Threat Nobody’s Talking About

Buried under all this is a statement from Defence Secretary John Healey: Russia has been running submarine operations near UK cables and pipelines. Good news—no damage yet. Bad news—this is happening. The UK detected it. The UK is announcing it. And nobody’s talking about it because we’re all watching Trump.

This matters because it reveals something true about the current moment: the threats don’t stop because Trump won. They accelerate. Russia tests. China watches. And mid-sized powers have to decide whether they’re going to build their own capacity to respond or hope the Americans remember they’re allied with them.

Given the last week? Hope’s looking thin.

What Starmer’s Actually Doing

Here’s what I think is happening behind the scenes at Number 10. Starmer’s not trying to restore the bromance. He’s doing something potentially smarter: he’s getting comfortable taking advantage of the fact that Trump doesn’t actually care about micro-managing British policy as long as the UK says nice things and doesn’t embarrass him.

The Chagos deal died. But notice the UK isn’t abandoning the Mauritius relationship. They’re just moving slower. The AI project paused. But the UK’s still building sovereign capability in tech policy. Iran talks collapsed. But the UK’s still positioned as a regional actor in the Middle East.

Starmer’s reading the room and adjusting. It’s not inspiring. It’s not great strategy. But it’s survival.

My prediction: by Q3 2025, you’ll see the UK taking more independent positions on things Trump doesn’t specifically care about—European policy, trade arrangements with non-American partners, immigration approaches that differ from the administration’s. Not because Starmer’s suddenly brave. Because Trump won’t notice as long as the UK keeps saying “special relationship” and makes useful comments about national security.

The bromance isn’t over. It just never existed. It was transactional on both sides, and Starmer’s finally understanding the actual terms of the transaction.

Photo by Tara Winstead / Pexels

What I’m Watching

• Mauritius and the Chagos timeline. Watch whether the UK actually tries to resurrect this deal in the back half of 2025 or whether it stays shelved. If it stays dead, Starmer’s just accepted that Trump veto power extends to post-colonial negotiations. That’s a threshold.

• OpenAI’s next move on UK investment. If they resume after 2026 US elections or commit to a major centre by summer 2025, that tells you whether companies think Trump’s intensity is cycle-dependent or permanent.

• Iran escalation points. If strikes happen in the next 60 days, watch whether the UK government was warning about that “fragile” ceasefire or whether they got caught flat-footed. Starmer said this would “define us for a generation.” Let’s see if the UK actually shaped how it gets defined.

• The submarine threat response. Real question: does the UK announce a major defence investment or upgrade to counter Russian operations? Or does it quietly ask America to handle it? That answer tells you everything about whether Britain’s building independent capacity or just hoping to stay useful.