Artful Dealing
Donald Trump and Theresa May | image by AP/Alamy
5 min read
Theresa May's former press chief reflects on what we've learned about how to deal with Donald Trump
Donald Trump has got something all of us wish for at some time: a second chance.
He will have spent four years seething about what went wrong during his first term and the people he shouldn’t have listened to, and those he foolishly let steer his first administration off course. This time around, he is doing it his way and we’d better get used to it.
For my part, there are things I might have done differently as director of communications at No 10 during the President’s first term. So here are some of my reflections on how Keir Starmer’s operation should best cope with a Trump White House.
Spending time with Trump is a surreal experience. When prepping Theresa May to be the first foreign leader to visit Trump after his first inauguration, some poor staffer was dispatched on an overnight mission to read and summarise The Art of the Deal, Trump’s book on how he likes to do business.
I’m going to give it another read as it’s probably the only political manifesto in the world worth paying attention to right now. It might be old but little changes – and what it tells us is that this President needs to win at all costs. But that doesn’t always have to produce a loser – and indeed Trump hates weakness – so the aim of the game is to find win-win situations for everyone involved.
Spending time with Trump is a surreal experience
In office, I found it was Trump’s unpredictability that niggled away at me the most. We learnt not to make knee-jerk reactions or assumptions – mostly because just when you think you know what he is going to do, he catches you out once again. Solid, reliable politicians like my boss Theresa May – and I suspect the current PM – plan, prep and do their homework to make sure they cover as many bases as possible. On some days, that work would be an utter waste of time. I remember joining calls in the Cobra room, listening to conversations between the President and the prime minister in total disbelief. More recently, it surprised me when I read that Starmer’s team sat and laughed through early calls with Trump. During my time at No 10, I genuinely did not find them a laughing matter. Plus, if you can’t respect the man, you should always respect the office.
The new inhabitants of No 10 do have my sympathy, though. A second-time-around politician will always be punchier than the first and, certainly when it comes to communications, the rules have most definitely changed. Whilst being attacked online, general comms advice is to ignore rather than give attacks airtime or stoke the flames. Now governments cannot afford to let myths, lies, and disinformation fester unchallenged. There is an inherent responsibility in this day and age to call out and challenge the politics that wilfully misleads, spreads division and hate and, most importantly, a mistrust of authority. In this regard, our government should lead from the front at all times – but as we have seen with Elon Musk – that comes with its own dangers.
Despite the mountain of challenges, we should look for common ground and maybe even face up to some hard truths. As someone who gives money monthly to charities supporting female reproductive rights in the US, I find this a difficult line to write, but here goes. He isn’t always wrong. He was right when he warned Germany at the UN it was too reliant on cheap Russian energy, even if he saw it through the prism of a deal that only benefited Russia and he wanted in on the action. We saw more action in terms of a peace deal in the Middle East and the release of hostages on the eve of his arrival in office than we have in the past year. Let’s watch this space with regards to Ukraine but his boldness with North Korea, where he went against all advice and broke decades of deadlock, has some admirers. And whilst the Chancellor’s spreadsheet won’t like it very much, he is also right about European defence spending. Maybe there is a lesson or two to learn about how he connects with his supporters. Whilst some in the Westminster bubble are still analogue, Trump won his election online. Those following like-minded politicians right now are not getting their news from the BBC, and they don’t give a hoot that Mark Zuckerberg has dropped fact-checking on Facebook.
Could it be that his America-first policies have finally shocked our own government into leaning fully into our own growth strategy, one that starts to accept that there are losers and winners in such an approach, but the majority will benefit if we give our economy the same kind of rocket boost that we have seen in the US? Maybe we might even steal a few policies – I’d put my last dollar on the fact that tax policies that incentive entrepreneurship, investment, and risk taking will outperform anything us Brits have come up with in recent years. Rather than take the easy doom and gloom approach, maybe, just maybe, if Starmer can channel some of this energy then there will be a lot less eating away at him for the things he failed to achieve when he finally leaves office, whenever that might be.
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