Over a balmy dinner at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday night, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton met Donald Trump for the first time under the nervous gaze of Dame Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador.
The Republican presidential candidate, leading the polls in several swing states, had plenty of reasons to bear a grudge — and his almost decade-long spat with Sadiq Khan suggested he was not one to forgive previous slights.
In 2016, Cameron had described Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the US as “divisive, stupid and wrong”.
“Looks like we’re not going to have a very good relationship,” Trump had replied on the eve of the Brexit referendum. “I think they’re very rude statements. And frankly, tell him I will remember those statements. They’re very nasty statements.”
In London, the sheer fact of Trump agreeing to a meeting had been celebrated as a diplomatic win given the dire predicament that Ukraine finds itself in, wavering US support and the whims of such an unpredictable partner. “The stars aligned and we managed to make it happen,” one UK source said.
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Over the course of a dinner characterised by sources close to Cameron as “warm” and “productive” with Trump in “listening mode”, the foreign secretary tried to unpick the arguments made by another recent guest at Mar-a-Lago, Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, who emerged from his meeting earlier this month declaring with undisguised glee that Trump had vowed to spend “not a penny more” on Ukraine.
Emphasising the boost that a $60 billion package of aid to Ukraine would give to the US defence companies, Cameron reminded Trump that any incoming president would be unlikely to want to enter the White House with Russian troops once again at the gates of Kyiv, something that now appears a realistic risk given Ukraine’s recent setbacks on the battlefield.
From Florida, Cameron headed to the newly revamped British ambassador’s residence in Washington DC, where the snub of a meeting with Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, was written off as an unfortunate casualty of Johnson’s battle to stay in post, resulting instead with a conversation with Steve Scalise, the Republican majority leader.
Cameron laid on the charm in Washington. Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, glowed as the foreign secretary spoke of his grandfather storming the Normandy beaches under covering fire from an American battleship on D-Day and his “love” for the United States.
“I can get emotional about it. To me, this is so fundamental to how Britain and America have worked together over years, over decades, to keep our world safe,” Cameron said.
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He and Blinken stifled grins as the foreign secretary was reminded of his past comments calling Trump “protectionist, xenophobic, misogynistic”.
“I try and keep the diplomatic language but sometimes it spills over into quite emotional language because this is the right thing to do,” Cameron said on supporting Ukraine, glossing over his remarks about the former president.
Although Johnson did not make time for the foreign secretary as the speaker clings to his own position, Cameron received a cordial welcome and a sympathetic ear from supporters of Ukraine on Capitol Hill. Mitch McConnell, the veteran Republican Senate leader, said he was “honoured” to meet Cameron and posted a photo of their conversation on social media.
“Working together, our two nations must continue to lead by example and invest in deterring serious challenges around the world,” McConnell said.
The last time Cameron had come to the US to lobby Republicans, he had come unstuck by comparing the anti-Ukraine wing of the party to Nazi appeasers. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the firebrand Trump supporter, had responded with an invitation to the foreign secretary to “kiss my ass”.
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This time Cameron repeated how loath he was to interfere in another country’s politics, hoping that some quiet words with Trump would be most effective at shifting Republican opinion — even if it required a dash to Florida to kiss the hand. “He doesn’t really care how it looks. Even if he fails, at least he can say he did something,” a government source said.
Although the trip was primarily dedicated to Ukraine, the unrest in the Middle East never strayed far from the agenda, and events overtook Cameron’s busy schedule when a meeting with Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, was downgraded to a call as the US released intelligence about an imminent Iranian attack on Israel on Wednesday.
Unlike the US, Britain has an embassy in Tehran, meaning Cameron finds himself at the centre of American attempts to talk the Iranian regime down from a full-scale war across the Middle East.
Barring the outbreak of regional war, Cameron will travel to Israel again next week, under pressure from different wings of the Conservative Party over the government’s stance on Gaza.
Pro-Israel MPs have complained that Cameron is succumbing to the “Arabist tendencies” in the Foreign Office while less sympathetic Tories have accused the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFoI) of acting like the “British Likud Party”.
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In Washington, Cameron confirmed that Britain will continue to sell arms to Israel despite the death toll in Gaza surpassing 33,000 — the opposite decision to the one he took in 2014, when as prime minister he said Britain would suspend weapons exports if Binyamin Netanyahu did not abide by a ceasefire.
At the heart of Cameron’s decision is the emotional debate within the Conservative Party over Britain’s support for Israel, an argument that has lasted for over a century and played a significant role in the founding of the state itself.
It was Sir Mark Sykes, a Conservative MP, alongside his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, who drew the lines in 1916 that still shape the current borders of Israel and it was Lord Balfour — like Cameron a Conservative prime minister who returned to cabinet as foreign secretary — who declared his support for the establishment of Jewish homeland in Palestine in a letter published in the Times a year later.
Balfour is among the portraits of previous foreign secretaries that hang in Cameron’s private office on King Charles Street, but pro-Israel MPs, angered by the UK’s decision to vote for an immediate ceasefire at the UN without condemning Hamas, complain that Cameron has betrayed the legacy of a man so celebrated in Israel that he lends his name to Netanyahu’s official residence in Jerusalem.
“It is important that the foreign secretary does not fall prey to the Arabist tendencies in the Foreign Office and continues to support a democracy like Israel over terrorists like Hamas,” said Bob Blackman, joint executive secretary of the 1922 Committee.
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More moderate Tories have grown frustrated at colleagues’ perceived support for Netanyahu, Israel’s long-term prime minister who they believe is more interested in maintaining power than protecting the lives of Palestinian civilians. “I think many think that being a ‘Friend of Israel’ is being a signed-up member of the British Likud Party,” one Tory said.
So far four MPs as well as a former Tory foreign secretary have urged Cameron to suspend arms exports to Israel, a gesture that will do little to curb the abilities of the IDF to wage war in Gaza but would be fraught with meaning. Britain sold just £42 million of arms to Israel in 2022, a tiny fraction of its total imports.
There is now mounting pressure on Cameron to publish legal advice over whether Israel has breached international humanitarian law after the foreign secretary said his decision to continue arms sales was “consistent” with lawyers’ arguments.
One of those who has called for a ban, Flick Drummond, the MP for Meon Valley, praised Cameron’s overall handling of the “very tricky” conflict but said she had “misgivings” about Israel’s adherence to international humanitarian law.
“My view is that our relations with Israel are primarily based on being friends and allies,” she said. “Of course, that does not mean we cannot be a critical friend and apply pressure when we believe the situation calls for it.”
But Stephen Crabb, the parliamentary chairman of the CFoI, accused Tory MPs calling for an end to arms sales of “playing straight into the war objectives of Hamas”. “Israel is being held to an incredibly high standard in terms of how this war is prosecuted. Hamas are being held to no standards at all,” he said.
A source close to Cameron said he listened to a “range of views” in the party but hinted that the foreign secretary viewed his legacy — and the ultimate prize of a durable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — as his main motivation. “His priority is to drive progress on securing a sustainable peace and a long-term solution,” the source said.
Cameron’s slick presenting skills earned plaudits when he recorded a video last week at a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels explaining the need for western countries to give more weapons to Ukraine.
But suspicions remain about his intentions given his involvement in the Greensill lobbying scandal. According to The Spectator, critics regard him as “a grifter seeking to set himself up for a lucrative post-election career”.
The former prime minister hopes to emerge from his second political coming with his reputation enhanced. But his greatest challenge as foreign secretary could still await if Tehran’s retaliation to an Israeli attack on its Damascus embassy results in a devastating confrontation between the region’s two greatest military powers. “That would change everything,” a government source said.
