I start this week’s note with a mea culpa. Last week, I mentioned how we had been inundated with tips and recommendations for our new column, Beer and Sandwiches, including one from “elderly pub-goer” Malcolm Nicholls who kindly wrote in to praise the feature while pointing out that we had spelled “Theakston’s” incorrectly. The letter prompted what now looks like a hilariously misdirected office debate about the correct use of apostrophes, involving the collective brains (ahem) of myself, the head of production and various others, when, in fact, all Malcolm meant to say was that we had included an extra “e” in Theakston’s. What is it that they say about noses and faces…? Malcolm: désolé.
With my grammatical confidence shot, I decided to double-check whether I had remembered the correct nose-face idiom before sending this column to print, only – to my joy – to discover a French version of the same saying, “Avoir le nez dans le guidon,” which I am told (and assured by the office linguists) translates as: “To have your nose in the handlebars.” I was quite taken by this sporting Gallic alternative. Having your nose in the handlebars seems to capture the almost slapstick nature of being too drawn to the details of a thing to be able to see the bigger picture. Which rather neatly brings us back to domestic politics.
Trying to make sense of the world can feel bewildering each day to the next. It was only a week ago that I sat with a senior figure in the government who was trying to work out how to deal with Elon Musk, contemplating a battle with the world’s richest man no one in No 10 wanted. A little over a week later, the furore over Grok seems to have largely disappeared following a rare Musk climbdown. Yet in its place we have American threats to annex Greenland, the sight of European troops being deployed to stop it – and the greatest crisis for Nato since its inception.
Amid this whirlwind, we also have the government’s decision to sanction the new Chinese mega embassy, Emmanuel Macron speaking of new tech deals with Beijing, and Mark Carney being hailed as the new Charles de Gaulle – and for good reason too. There does not appear to be a more dynamic leader in the world today. Everywhere you look, the world seems to be shifting, adapting to the new Caligula in the White House. Inside No 10, meanwhile, the government muddles on, hurt and incredulous at the capricious nature of the US president, but also convinced, unlike Carney, that there is little choice but to calmly endure his outbursts, however humiliating, because the fundamentals of the transatlantic alliance will endure.
But are we not staring at our handlebars a little too intently here? Looking up, does it really seem likely that Trump will expand America’s involvement in Europe to provide a long-term and sustainable military backstop for an independent Ukraine against Russia, as Starmer and Macron continue to hope and call for? Indeed, is it credible to believe that Trump wants to maintain the United States’ commitment to Nato? As one influential government adviser put it to me this week: “Trump wants greatness, fame, infamy – to make history. We are just not used to dealing with people like that.” Or, as Carney put it at Davos: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.”
Indeed, speaking with people in this government often feels like the world hasn’t really changed at all. Of course we need to become more self-reliant, they say, but no one wants the Americans to actually leave Europe. Their “leadership” is still crucial. But, at one point, will this change? What will the tipping point be where Europe actively seeks American withdrawal? One question now being asked in Washington is whether this is what Trump is actually seeking to force himself. Contemplating such a world, the issue of Europe has veered back into view again – as this week’s cover attests. It was always going to, of course. For 80 years, Europe and America have served as two great alternatives; competing visions of modernity. In the 1960s, after Suez, Europe became the answer. In the 1980s, America provided inspiration. By the 2000s, Tony Blair wanted both.
Today, we are once again split as a country. While the radical right looks to Trump’s nationalist America for inspiration, the left is turning ever more confidently to Europe, even as the continent turns rightwards. Battlelines are forming, with radically different futures now up for grabs. Europe has returned to British politics, though of course it never really went away.
[Further reading: Europe must break from America]
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This article appears in the 21 Jan 2026 issue of the New Statesman, Europe is back
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