The Tory Party's Trump Conundrum

Theresa May’s aides told reporters she aimed to be Margaret Thatcher to Donald Trump’s Ronald Reagan as she flew to Washington to claim the honour of being the first foreign leader to visit his White House in 2017.

It didn’t turn out that way; their relationship was never better than awkward. The golden era of transatlantic conservatism, like a fading photograph, grows ever older. Indeed, relations between the Republican and Conservative parties have rarely been less close.

The position of Trump’s British handmaiden has, after all, been taken. Nigel Farage and the former US president share a genius for modern internet-powered campaigning, as well as a set of views, including how to deal with Vladimir Putin, that make many Conservatives uneasy.

So how do Tories deal with a Trump second term – and what lessons should they take if instead he falls short, meaning that by 2028 the Republicans will have been in the White House for just four of the previous 16 years?

Conservatives are trying to keep lines of communication open with Trump’s Republicans with the election just months away. In an intervention that surprised some of his colleagues, Robert Jenrick, alone among the Tory candidates, said he wants Trump to win.

Though Jenrick has never met Trump, he maintains close links with Elbridge Colby, who many predict will be Trump’s national security advisor should he return to the White House. The pair first met in Washington this February.

Colby made headlines for criticising former foreign secretary Lord Cameron’s “wildly incoherent” approach to defence. However, he was impressed by current Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s “real effort to reach out to Conservatives and new-Right people” in the US, and by his acknowledgement that Europe must spend more on its own defence while the US steels itself against China.

Jenrick is striking the same chord: when he wrote an article in The Telegraph about America not being “the world’s policeman”, a source close to both the Conservatives and the Republican Party said Colby was “very complimentary”.

Months after resigning as immigration minister, Jenrick travelled to Texas for a look at Trump’s border wall with Mexico. Returning to the UK, he said there are “areas we can learn from Donald Trump”, one of which was illegal immigration.

Other more right-wing Conservatives are maintaining links with Trump’s Republicans through the think-tank world. For instance, in June Suella Braverman appeared in Washington to speak at conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation’s annual Margaret Thatcher Freedom Lecture, where she made an impression on Trump-wing Republicans.

“The Trump wing of the GOP was most enthused by Braverman”, says the same source, citing her Heritage Foundation appearance.

In July, the former home secretary spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington. The Edmund Burke Foundation, which organises the conference, expensed more than £6,500 to host her.

Mark Littlewood, director of right-wing movement Popular Conservatism, says the Heritage Foundation is the “go to” for senior Conservatives looking to shore up relationships in Washington.

“It retains the view of the special relationship from the Reagan-Thatcher years. Indeed, was a sort of creature and creation of the emergence of Reagan and Thatcher.”

However, the Heritage Foundation has been thrown off-kilter by Trump. “One of the issues the Heritage Foundation and many others have grappled with on the established centre-right is whether you embrace Trump, whether you try and at least guide Trump down a particular path, or whether you take a much more hostile position with regard to Trump,” says Littlewood.

With the Heritage Foundation adrift, a new Trump-backed think tank is gaining prominence. America First Policy Institute (AFPI) appears to be an “organisational or policy wing of the Maga movement”, says Littlewood, who was recently invited to their conference in Mar-a-Lago.

The AFPI counts well-known Trump loyalists – Kellyanne Conway and Linda McMahon, for instance – as its chairs. Robert Lighthizer, who served as Trump’s trade representative for four years, is another AFPI chair. Lighthizer also invited Robert Jenrick to Trump’s inauguration in 2017.

While Jenrick seems to be the only candidate with links to the AFPI, Tom Tugendhat has proved influential in more traditionally conservative think tanks.

“Tugendhat gets the most mentions in the moderate Republican wing and the foreign policy hawk wing,” says a source close to both parties. “He has clearly worked the think-tank world here pretty hard, and his views are respected. He actually gets mentioned more positively regarding foreign policy than [James] Cleverly as a former foreign secretary”.

While some in the US are said not to see former Foreign Affairs Committee chair Alicia Kearns as a “real Conservative”, a parliamentary source thinks Kearns is “trending a little to the right” on foreign policy lately, “particularly on China”.

Her involvement with right-wing think tank the Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forum (PISF) confirms this. The PISF is led by former Republican congressman Robert Pittenger, and concentrates on issues relating to cybersecurity, human trafficking and cryptocurrency.

Previous forums the group has held have attracted high-ranking Republicans such as Marco Rubio. In September, Kearns played a large role in a PISF meeting held in London, and wrote to Pittenger after the event, saying how it is “more vital than ever that likeminded policy makers get together to collaborate and share expertise”.

But while the UK and US have historically proved allies in foreign policy, the war in Ukraine has exposed a red line for the Conservatives in any future business dealings with Trump.

In November, Liz Truss led a delegation of Lord Howard, Iain Duncan Smith, Jack Lopresti and Mark Francois to Washington in an attempt to persuade Trump-wing Republicans to approve a vital aid package for Ukraine.

Lord Howard, a former Tory leader and cabinet minister under Thatcher and John Major, says the group “saw a number of congressmen and tried hard to persuade them to vote the way we wanted them to, and they didn’t then, but of course, they did later. I don’t expect that our visit played much of a part in their decision.”

Lord Howard adds the congressmen were “quite straightforward” in saying they would like to vote for aid in Ukraine, but were “fearful they would face a hostile primary” because “Trump was telling everybody that they shouldn’t vote”.

Former Defence Committee chair Tobias Ellwood agrees Trump’s grip on the Republican Party is as strong as ever. “His brand has become so powerful that it’s actually difficult to advance within the party construct, because you simply can’t get the money, support or funding.”

“In an ideal world the Republican Party could return to what it used to be, and the links between the Conservative Party and the Republican Party would be very strong,” says Lord Howard.

The Conservative Party may struggle to adapt to a second Trump term, critics say, because the would-be president sees the Conservatives as a spent force.

A source close to both the Conservatives and Republican Party said even the supportive Jenrick is yet to make impact in Trump circles. “I have not heard any senior GOP person talk about Rob Jenrick,” they say.

Farage thinks this is because Republicans simply cannot recognise Conservatives as part of the same movement.

“The Republicans don’t even think [in the UK] we’re conservative”, said the Reform UK leader. “I just think that what we don’t have any more are big figures,” he says. “If you look at the [leadership candidates] – yes they held a high office some of them, but in the last days of a failing Conservative regime.”

In his liaisons with Trump, Farage may see himself as a Thatcher or Winston Churchill breathing life into the ‘special relationship’. But Farage’s influence on right-wing politics is overblown, says Luke Coffey, senior fellow at Washington-based think tank Hudson Institute, and a former aide to Liam Fox.

“The Trump-Farage relationship is built up bigger than what it really is in the UK. Farage trades off this big time; he dines out on his perceived closeness to Donald Trump. Is he a friend of Donald Trump’s? I think Donald Trump would probably view Nigel Farage as an acquaintance.”

Any PM who can give Trump face time with the Royal Family instantly gains his favour, he adds.

“You put Donald Trump in front of the King or the late Queen when he was in office the first time, you have the Royal Horse Guards march by, and you have parades. He loves that stuff at the end of the day. Nigel Farage can’t top that. If you’re a British prime minister, that’s the most direct way to Donald Trump’s heart”. 

If Jenrick were to become leader, Littlewood adds he could focus less on retail policies – leaving the European Court of Human Rights and quashing quangos, for instance – and lean into Trump-style visionary rhetoric. 

“I rather hope he goes for the view that the UK requires really quite enormous institutional change and constitutional reset, and the fact that the Conservatives inherited and built upon rather than unravelled the Blairite consensus was one of the reasons, possibly the prevailing reason, why 14 years of Conservative government has not made the country more Conservative.”

Borrowing from the Trump playbook may ultimately prove more rewarding for Conservatives than maintaining relationships with the former president, as Trump’s position in the Republican Party is by no means safe.

One former Conservative MP says he met with Florida governor Ron DeSantis recently, who made it clear he is “definitely eyeing four years from now”.

“Ron DeSantis is definitely looking towards four years’ time, just as whoever is winning the leadership of the Tory party at this moment in time, whoever wins, the big question mark is, will they be going into the election after this?”

Conservative MPs are all too aware of the fragility of political office, and have been wise in upholding relationships across the US political spectrum.

Ellwood points to “constant back-channel discussions” between Conservative MPs and the wider Republican party. For instance, Ellwood is close to Republican Congressman Mike Turner. A source close to Penny Mordaunt says she is still friends with former representatives Liz Cheney and Nikki Haley, and kept a tile from Congress in her office as leader of the house. Similarly, Liz Truss has close ties to Senator Mike Lee.

“Lots of Conservatives I know, certainly the ones that were in parliament before that no longer are, would always make an effort to meet with both sides,” adds Coffey. “I think, ideologically speaking, they probably feel slightly more comfortable with some of the moderate Democrats. I’m not talking like AOC – the so-called ‘squad’, but the more mainstream centre-left Democrats in the United States.”

Maintaining the ‘special relationship’ through links with the Republican Party misunderstands the origins of the term, he concludes. Though famously harking back to Thatcher and Reagan, the wording was first used by Churchill to emphasise military co-operation with the United States during World War Two.

“The fundamentals of the special relationship are built around security, defence and intelligence,” says Coffey.

“It’s nice if leaders can get along, but they’re only going to be around for a certain number of years. At the end of the day, the officials, the military-to-military co-operation and the intelligence co-operation at the officials level will continue on. That’s really what makes that relationship special.”

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