Will Trump be Burnham’s undoing, or the making of him? The answer lies in Europe | Jonathan Freedland

Burnham’s first 10 days or so in office have gone about as well as he or any of his team could have dared hope. His net approval rating has risen by 17 points, according to one early poll, gaining ground with every category of voter except supporters of Reform UK, though they too like some of what they see. His easy manner, no-notes speech-making and agility on social media have won plaudits, including from a usually sceptical press.

But the new prime minister will know that all this could be upended at a stroke, with a single move by the man in the White House. Keir Starmer watched as the earliest green shoots of economic growth emerged earlier this year, only to be crushed by Trump’s decision to combine with Israel and attack Iran. What can Burnham do to ensure he does not suffer that same fate? As it happens, the answer to that question answers another: what might constitute a Burnham foreign policy that would match the spirit and ethos of the agenda he has set out at home?

So far most of the discussion in this area has concentrated on how the new PM should handle his counterpart in Washington. Some suggest his best bet is to emulate Starmer: swallow your pride, ladle on the flattery, avoid overt confrontation. Maybe tickle Trump’s tummy by promising to drill in the North Sea, even as Suffolk is engulfed in the flames of the climate breakdown. Others say the US president is a bully who only respects strength: therefore, stand up to him, even if that means a row.

All this owes more to the realm of animal psychology than political analysis. Different world leaders have tried both approaches – nice guy and tough guy – and both have failed. And sometimes succeeded. Trump has an attention span measured in seconds; he is erratic and impulse driven; he changes his mind without warning, logic or consistency.

Those at the sharp end have come to understand this, which helps explain the muted reaction to Trump’s announcement late on Thursday of a breakthrough in Gaza. “There is scepticism and cautiousness among Palestinians,” reported Al Jazeera after Trump said Hamas was ready to disarm in return for an Israeli withdrawal from the territory. As anyone who has followed his zigzagging engagement with the Middle East has come to learn, the safest response to any development heralded by the US president is: don’t hold your breath.

Faced with such a man, it’s foolish to imagine a British prime minister can have much impact on American decisions. Even senior US administration officials have been known to admit privately that they have next to no sway over Trump, so why would a British PM fare any better? Brits do have access – I’m told that national security adviser Jonathan Powell is in regular contact with Trump’s personal envoy and golfing buddy Steve Witkoff – but that is not the same as influence.

The remedy, then, is not to hope to change a president who won’t change, but rather to be less exposed to his whims. And that points to a much larger strategy, one that makes sense in terms of both policy and politics – and which just so happens to fit Burnham’s approach to a T.

The prime minister’s opening pitch has been that he will speak to voters candidly, that he will confront the big problems that his predecessors ducked and that he is ready to break from orthodoxies that have held too long. He has already made a start in that vein domestically, with his promise this week to tackle social care. But why not extend it to the international realm?

It would begin with a stark admission that the foundation of postwar UK foreign policy is no longer stable – that we cannot rely on the US as the guarantor of our security. A US president who muses out loud about abandoning Nato, who threatens to seize the territory (Greenland) of a Nato ally (Denmark) and whose support for a country (Ukraine) invaded by an enemy (Russia) is so inconstant, is less a guarantor than a danger. It is clearly reckless to remain in a state of dependence on such a power.

Luckily, there is a group of allies close at hand who have reached that same conclusion and are already acting on it. Our European neighbours are coming together to defend themselves, without relying on Washington. They are borrowing money collectively, which makes it cheaper, and pooling resources, which makes arms spending more efficient. Add the Safe loan programme, funding joint defence procurement to the tune of €150bn (£128bn), to the EU arming of Ukraine, and you can see why Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, tells me: “The EU is becoming a security community.”

It is security broadly defined too. Witness joint EU action on energy, to plug the gap previously filled by Russian gas; vaccines during the Covid pandemic; cybersecurity and election interference; the climate crisis and immigration. In an increasingly dangerous world, the Europeans are finding safety in numbers. And we, though they are our nearest neighbours, are on the outside.

There is an economic dimension to this. Spending your defence budgets closer to home, rather than on US-made hardware, serves pretty well as what Burnham might call a reindustrialisation strategy. The French have long understood that; the Germans increasingly so. Not for nothing has Berlin decided to spend only 8% of its massive €80bn rearmament drive on US weapons. As the EU moves to a “buy European” approach, it will be European industry that benefits – but not us.

The economic dimension goes further, because our security is threatened in that sphere too. As Mark Carney of Canada correctly diagnosed in his Davos speech, globalisation, and the economic interdependence it entails, can easily be turned into a weapon. Trump’s US wields it through the imposition of tariffs, China by controlling access to rare earth metals. The best way for a country to protect itself is to stop being dependent on either of those two titans. The UK’s only shot at such independence is, perhaps paradoxically, to be part of a group large enough to aim for resilience and self-sufficiency – and that means the EU.

It will look politically daring, but that’s only if you adopt the view from Westminster – where Brexit seems untouchable and all anyone can see are red lines. Among the people of Britain, it’s a very different picture. A major survey by the ECFR in June found that Britons now regard Brexit as a “disaster”, with three-quarters wanting a closer relationship with the EU. One striking number: when asked to choose, 63% said they would prioritise the relationship with the EU over the US, with only 19% making the opposite choice. A plurality even favours the creation of that one-time tabloid spectre: a European army with British troops in it. As Leonard puts it: “The waters are much warmer than people realise.”

This, then, is what Burnhamism could look like abroad – a willingness to face the world as it now is, to break from the old, Atlanticist default setting and to pursue a new approach that will make us both militarily and economically more resilient. The answer is no longer to put our trust in a single, unreliable friend – but rather to combine with our nearest neighbours. The new prime minister has so much to do, but he can do almost none of it without challenging a status quo that has done so much damage in a single decade. He will have to undo the folly of 2016 – and look to Europe.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist