The UK must not ignore Trump’s threats against its ally but should forge a new Atlantic consensus with Canada
Downing Street, 17 March 2025: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Prime Minister Keir Starmer | Image by: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo
4 min read
The British and the Canadians are bound by family ties, a progressive worldview, our shared history, and our contemporary collaboration in an increasingly uncertain world
Our two maritime nations share a unique bond. As Mélanie Joly, the Foreign Affairs Minister, said last month, friendship between the UK and Canada is “in our DNA”. In war or peace, we’ve stood together.
In the First World War, Canadians marched alongside Brits, unwavering in their support for the UK. For the lonely years at the start of the Second World War, Canada was our sole ally in the North Atlantic. In the 21st century, as the international consensus is threatened, our joint security programmes like Five Eyes are ever more important.
No two figures are better-suited to symbolising that relationship than Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and Prime Minister Mark Carney. You don’t have to look hard to find similarities; both stand out from their peers, having spent the earlier portion of their careers leading a vital public service. Both know the value of the rules-based international system, whether it is Carney’s intimate knowledge of the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other key financial institutions, or Starmer’s grasp of the value of human rights legislation, and the international rule of law.
Those traditional values are refreshing in the age of the populist insurgents. Further, it is refreshing that neither statesman cuts a “flashy” figure – the voting publics are tired of that. Instead, Carney and Starmer are laser-focused on real results that benefit working families, in contrast to the brash radicals at home and abroad. And neither man is Donald Trump. Yet, for all his jabs and jibes, the President clearly respects them both as hard-nosed statesmen and strong negotiators, ready to stick up for the countries that they love.
It is simply impossible to understand why the President is openly entertaining the idea of annexing the world’s nicest country, his northern neighbour – but we can’t dismiss his rhetoric around the 51st state as anything other than a threat against our biggest and closest Commonwealth partner. To do so would be letting down an ally we should be proud to have.
It is these strong, shared beliefs that make the double act of Starmer and Carney on the world stage such a breath of fresh air
Before us is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to work together to lead and shape the new Atlantic consensus. Standing together with Ukraine is a must. Both the UK and Canada have been strong in their support for Ukraine and clear in their commitment to ensure that Putin does not win this war. Carney and Starmer are internationalists at heart. While Washington focuses more domestically, there is now a golden opportunity for a new consensus on the rules of engagements, on the rise of asylum seekers fleeing drought, famine and war, the biggest challenges to geopolitics today. If our liberal-minded allies don’t plug that gap, it will be those who do not share our common values that seek to do so.
As the USA withdraws from the global challenge of climate change, Carney’s role as a leading voice on sustainability provides an opportunity to take existing collaborations further by building on the 2017 Canada-UK Partnership on Clean Growth and Climate Change. Not only will that allow for the transformation of the North Atlantic into a global green energy powerhouse, but it will allow a pair of results-oriented leaders to foster domestic economic growth, bringing down energy costs for the ordinary working Brits and Canadians who they’ve pledged to fight for. International leadership and domestic success are two sides of the same coin, and both Starmer and Carney get that innately.
It is these strong, shared beliefs that make the double act of Starmer and Carney on the world stage such a breath of fresh air. A sensible and pragmatic pair, yet bold and uncompromising in the values we all hold dear, making their mark in the United Nations, and in the international institutions they have come to know so well, not just exciting – it is the leadership the international community so desperately needs.
The friendship between the UK and Canada is no longer a relationship that is nice to have – it is now a partnership that can shape the free world.
Emily Darlington is the Labour MP for Milton Keynes Central , she emigrated to Canada when she was young and worked for the Liberal Government in the 1990s. She moved back to the UK in 2000
