"From Active Courting To Managed Containment": The Evolving Tory Approach To Trump

Illustration by Antonello Sticca

Asked on Newsnight last month whether Donald Trump was an ally of the United Kingdom, Kemi Badenoch gave a one-word answer: “Sometimes.”

It was a far cry from her first Prime Minister’s Questions as Conservative leader, in November 2024, when she congratulated the president-elect on his “impressive victory” and asked for him to be invited to address Parliament.

The Republican Party is a natural ally of the Conservatives, but politics on both sides of the Atlantic has strained the relationship. Earlier this month, after President Trump eased sanctions on Russian diesel and said Ukraine should get a new president, Badenoch wrote that “Ukraine’s freedom is not President Trump’s to bargain away”. That criticism went further than Andy Burnham did.

Priti Patel, then shadow foreign secretary, told the Washington Examiner in March: “Our sister party is the Republican Party, 100 per cent.” But the party has struggled to stay close to every wing of the GOP. When Matt Schlapp, chairman of the Maga-aligned Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), came to London in July, he said the Tories did not deserve the label “conservative”.

Patel has since been replaced but was handed a new international role focused on sister parties. It came shortly after Badenoch visited the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni – a trip that ended in bickering with Reform (like much of the party’s outreach this year) over what Meloni had told her.

Patel’s job is to smooth out differences like these. “I think it’s interesting that the Conservative Party sees the importance of creating deeper relationships with like-minded political parties around the world, and build relationships with potential future leaders,” says Sarah Elliott, director of the Prosperity Institute’s Special Relationship Unit.

In Washington, the former home secretary is well-liked. Greg Swenson, chairman of Republicans Overseas UK and a fundraiser for Trump, says the party’s links go beyond the White House. “There’s definitely people with relationships – Priti Patel’s got really good relationships [with the administration],” he says. Patel, he adds, “is friends with” Marco Rubio from the secretary of state’s years in the Senate.

Goodwill towards one MP is not the same as loyalty to her party. “Republicans naturally regard the official right-leaning party as their counterpart, so the Conservative Party,” Elliott says. “However, with Reform UK on the scene and Nigel Farage’s friendship with Donald Trump well-known in American conservative media, Reform UK is looked [on] as the more Maga-adjacent one for many in the Republican Party.”

Swenson goes further. “[There’s] the personal relationship between Trump and Nigel, but just the movement itself is clearly a Maga-type movement,” he says. “Reform definitely wins the respect of the Republican Party on their views on mass migration and illegal migration. I don’t think the Tories can ever get that back.”

Conservative MPs insist the bond holds. “It’s right that we should engage as positively as we can with President Trump and his administration and with our sister party, the Republican Party in the United States,” says Bernard Jenkin, the Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex. He prefaces that with a warning, though: “President Trump and his regime is a very difficult thing for the UK to deal with. No previous president has ever questioned Article 5 of the Nato treaty.”

The rhetoric has shifted all the same. In February 2025 Badenoch said JD Vance had been “dropping some truth bombs” in his Munich speech, in which he accused European leaders of retreating from free speech. By April this year she was saying Trump should not be “abandoning a mess that he’s made”. This month she told The Spectator: “He’s quite erratic.”

Washington may not have noticed. “To be perfectly honest, I am not sure many Republicans would have picked up on her criticisms of the president or his foreign policy,” Elliott says.

Her allies reject the idea that she has changed course. “I think Kemi’s been completely consistent,” Jenkin says, adding: “We should avoid pissing off the Trump administration unnecessarily, but that doesn’t mean that Kemi’s wrong to speak out when the British national interest is involved.”

At the Conservative Party Conference, Tom Tugendhat, the new shadow foreign secretary, spent his speech attacking Ed Miliband, and Badenoch’s hour-long speech did not mention Trump or America once.

“President Trump and his regime is a very difficult thing for the UK to deal with”

Jack Pannell of the British Foreign Policy Group (BFPG) says the party has little choice. Trump is “a deeply toxic figure across the UK”, he explains. The BFPG’s annual survey found that 67 per cent of 2024 Conservative voters trusted the US to act responsibly in the world; this year, 36 per cent did. Reform voters, at 45 per cent, are now the outliers. “Nigel Farage is a friend of Trump, and that is a potential distinction for the Conservative Party: yes, we are more pro-US, but we are not necessarily in the pocket of Maga,” Pannell says.

The difference shows in the two parties’ trips across the Atlantic. When Farage goes to America, he follows Trump, whether to his second inauguration or to Palm Beach. The Conservatives have stuck with the Republican establishment. Tugendhat has made four trips paid for by the Hudson Institute, the think tank where he is a fellow. Badenoch’s only donor-funded trip across the Atlantic was to the Hoover Institution.

“Kemi and Conservative MPs visit Washington regularly, so it appears that their relationship with Republican leadership, especially on Capitol Hill, is solid,” Elliott says. Swenson doubts the establishment can carry the Tories far. “I don’t think it swings back to the traditional establishment,” he says. “[The Tories] would be much better off being in touch with the Maga people, which is now most of the administration.”

Last week, the White House took Farage’s side against Badenoch again. After Badenoch attacked Farage’s offer of guaranteed US use of the base at Diego Garcia, a White House official said that anyone claiming Farage meant to give away the Chagos Islands was “peddling fake news and undermining the Anglo-American relationship, including, apparently, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch”.

The party’s response was muted. “The relationship has moved from active courting to managed containment,” says a Conservative with close ties to Washington. “The time where having Trump on side won you points over Farage has gone.”

In her Washington Examiner interview in March, Patel insisted Republican senators were “not engaging with those guys, the other guys”. Five months later, Vance met Reform’s Robert Jenrick in Washington. Afterwards Jenrick said Britain’s allies “know Reform is the party with the plan” on defence spending.

The price of Washington’s respect, Elliott suggests, is policy. Republicans would like the Conservatives to be “more forthright and assertive” on immigration, especially small boats crossing the Channel, she says. “President Trump will only respect the British leaders who will expand North Sea oil drilling and clamp down on illegal and legal immigration.”

Jenkin, who has sat in the Commons through nine pairings of president and Conservative prime minister, advises politicians to leave well alone when Trump or his allies intervene.

“Nobody in the UK is accountable for what Trump says or what his administration says about what’s going on in the United Kingdom,” he says. 

“I think the one thing President Trump likes is provoking a reaction. Don’t react.” 

Related

Energy Secretary Says "Common Sense" Approach To Climate Change Can Beat The Greens

By Zoe Crowther

22 Oct