Sleeping with the elephant

What Starmer could learn from Canada 

My country, Canada, faces an existential threat. Over the course of his new administration’s first month, Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that Canada should be the 51^st state, essentially signalling annexation. Trump has, so far, ruled out military intervention, stating that his plan is to absorb Canada by economic force. But while attitudes in Canada veer between bemused scepticism, disbelief, and anger, the sense of threat has become visceral. Trump’s desire to annex Canada is, in Justin Trudeau’s words, ‘a real thing’. Only 10% of Canadians think he’s joking. The fear is real. 

Even before Friday’s showdown between Trump and Zelensky, Keir Starmer’s meticulously prepared charm offensive at the White House made me feel queasy. The visit, which secured US approval for the UK government’s Chagos deal and positive-sounding noises on a tariff-free trade agreement, was quickly described on the front pages of UK papers as a ‘diplomatic win’, ‘unlikely bromance’, and ‘love-in’. Trump described Starmer as a ‘very special person’, and praised his wife Victoria as a ‘beautiful great woman’. An editorial in the Canadian Toronto Sun tabloid, meanwhile, was headlined ‘Starmer gives us the royal kiss-off.’

The Starmer team’s biggest soft power coup was a personal letter from King Charles III, whisked from the Prime Minister’s top pocket, inviting Trump on an unprecedented second state visit. The President, well-known for his fondness for golden palaces and the word ‘king’, quickly accepted. The invitation prompted a question from The Independent’s White House correspondent Andrew Feinberg about whether the King had ‘expressed any concern with the President’s desire to remove one of his realms from his control’. Starmer answered nervously: ‘You mentioned Canada. I think you’re trying to find a divide between us that doesn’t exist.’ With friends like these…

In Canada, King Charles’ title bears no reference to Great Britain: he is officially ‘Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Canada and His other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth’. The Monarch, in short, has a separate, direct constitutional relationship to Canada, and a commensurate responsibility to its government and people. It is a blatant dereliction of the King’s duty and constitutional role to allow the Crown to be used as a pawn in Britain’s short term strategic interests when the sovereignty of his other realms is at stake. And, as Friday’s subsequent showdown and failed talks between Trump and Zelensky drove home, it is also an increasingly cowardly look for Britain.

The special relationship has always required Britain to grovel: even Harold Wilson’s success in keeping Britain out of the Vietnam War in the late 1960s required diplomatic debasement. But while no one expected Starmer to go to bat for Canada, Love Actually-style, Canadians might at least have expected platitudes of friendship and a gesture of respect for our sovereignty. Starmer’s comments have already drawn anger from across the Canadian political spectrum. The iconoclastic commentator Terry Glavin called Starmer ‘An obsequious, cap-doffing, kowtowing disgrace.’ In response to Starmer’s second failure to defend Canadian sovereignty in a Fox News interview recorded after the White House press conference, conservative National Post journalist John Ivison tweeted ‘He didn’t shit the bed once, he did it twice’. The British commentariat, meanwhile, remains curiously silent on Canadian sovereignty and the increasingly alarming parallels with Ukraine. Frankly, we’d appreciate a little solidarity.

As the historian Asa McKercher points out, Canadian nationalism has long responded to threats of integration into the American economy. In 1911, the Canadian American Reciprocity Treaty between Liberal Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier and US President William Howard Taft led to a surge of Canadian nationalism and a Conservative victory in the election that year. The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1988 also galvanised Canadian national identity. While past nationalist moments have been oriented against free trade, rather than Trump’s protectionist strongarm tactics, deeply-rooted resistance to economic integration, cultural assimilation and annexation is shaping Canadian politics today.

Since January, the Canadian political landscape has been dramatically transformed by another nationalist frenzy. Trump’s repeated threats to annex Canada have been more galvanizing for Canadians on the left and centre. The result has been a dramatic bounce for the governing Liberal Party: following a year and a half in which pollsters predicted its certain annihilation, it has surged by 10% since early January, and may soon be positioned to form government again – likely under the leadership of former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney. Meanwhile, support for the Conservative Party, whose leader, Pierre Poilievre, was derided by Trump on Friday in the Spectator as ‘not a MAGA guy, you know?’, has slumped by four points. 

The Canadian example holds obvious electoral lessons for Starmer. As of last week, a YouGov poll reported that half of voters want the UK to stand up to Trump, and a More in Common poll last month reported that 59% hold a negative view of the American President – numbers which, it seems safe to assume, will rise following the events of this week and the United States’ increasing unreliability as an ally. While the Conservative and Reform Party’s attempts to align themselves with the American culture war agenda appeal to some, they face a hard ceiling on public opinion. The Labour Party, with its own deep internal fissures over foreign policy, has always struggled to balance electoral and strategic calculations in government. But the math, after this week, is clear: the short term gain of dodging American tariffs is not worth the electoral or moral cost.

In 1969, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told an American audience at the Washington Press Club that ‘Living next to you is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.’ Britain may have struggled to manage its special relationship with the United States, but Canada has had to sleep next to the animal. Instead of sidelining Canada, Starmer should look to us for guidance about how to manage a newly unpredictable ally. 

Lise Butler is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at City St. George’s, University of London, and a co-editor of Renewal.