In the 1998 movie The Horse Whisperer, Robert Redford is a man with a special ability to communicate with horses and, using a combination of emotional intelligence and body language, put them at ease, rendering the previously unruly and capricious, calm and predictable. This week, Micheál Martin proved that he – never mind Keir Starmer, Giorgia Meloni or Emmanuel Macron – is the ultimate Trump Whisperer. He becalms the mercurial president. Martin speaks Trump.
Don’t underestimate, as we move ahead, the advantage of being the Trump Whisperer. Trump is a people person, not a policy person. His transactional, rather than analytical, mind reacts to good and bad guys, deals and flattery. Not for him logic or rational thought. Instinctive, he thinks fast, not slow.
To use a Trumpian poker analogy, Martin played a bad hand well. As a rule-taker not a rule-maker, Ireland will be regularly faced with choices, not between good and bad but between bad and worse. Play to your strengths, pick your fights, roll with the punches.
We witnessed in the White House the “Doonbegisation” of Irish foreign policy, a nostalgic version of Oirishness – half Five Lamps, half Five Iron – a dreamy place that resides in the head of the US president. The plucky little Irish, younger cousins almost, hostage to those horrible people in the EU, yet still coming out swinging, more Jimmy Cagney than Jimmy Carter – people you can do business with, unlike those foreign Europeans.
David McWilliams: We witnessed in the White House the ‘Doonbegisation’ of Irish foreign policy
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We should declare war on dereliction and a tax amnesty is our best weapon
We know it’s a fantasy but let’s take it and move on, because the battles ahead will change our world in ways we have not yet contemplated. They will require a bit more than whispering because when the world tilts on its geopolitical axis, nothing remains the same, for anyone.
The most significant change in the past couple of weeks has occurred in Germany. For decades Germany slumbered, allowing the US to set policy, happy to save money under the protective umbrella of the American deterrent. That’s over.
In Berlin, chancellor in waiting Friedrich Merz has indicated that Germany will rearm, reposition and reboot itself to be the major power in Europe. A close to €1 trillion spending package is in the offing and Germany now sees itself as the guardian of eastern Europe against the menace of Russia. It will never trust the US again because a conditional alliance is no alliance at all. But it needs friends. It can’t and mustn’t – for historical reasons – go it alone.
This is where Britain comes in. After Germany, the Nato member that must feel most aggrieved by Trump’s abandonment of Europe is London. The UK’s entire Atlanticist policy was based on the unwavering support of Washington. That’s gone. The UK must find another path, and all roads lead to Berlin, via Brussels.
For the first time in this Brexit decade, the EU wants Britain and Britain wants Europe. Will Keir Starmer, a Europhile, seize the opportunity to bring the UK back to Europe, become a great man in history by winning the next election and restoring the Blairite identity that the Labour Party so misses? Is a UK referendum on the EU a political risk 10 years after the last one? The numbers don’t suggest so. It looks like a no-brainer.
Far from the Global Britain that was promised, Britain has turned in on itself. The UK has gone from being the fastest-growing G7 economy before the referendum to the slowest in recent years
Fifty-five per cent of British voters now say it was wrong for the UK to leave the EU, while only 30 per cent believe it was the right decision – the highest level of regret recorded since 2016. Only about one in 10 (11 per cent) still view Brexit as “more of a success than a failure”, whereas roughly six in 10 (62 per cent) consider it “more of a failure” so far. Even Leavers (nearly one in five) have changed their mind, reflecting growing remorse about the 2016 vote.
If a referendum were held today, polls suggest Britain would vote to rejoin the EU by a sizeable margin. A mid-2024 YouGov survey found 59 per cent would opt to rejoin versus 41 per cent for staying out. Other polls show similar or even wider margins. One June 2023 study estimated support at 61 per cent (excluding undecideds) against 39 per cent for staying out. Public support for fully reversing Brexit stands at about 55 per cent overall, with 39 per cent “strongly” in favour – outnumbering the roughly one-third who oppose re-entry to the EU. Europe is not high on the list of priorities for voters, exhausted by years of fighting and instability, but if they were asked to vote, there is now a big margin which is pro-European.
If the vote were framed as a martial UK coming to the rescue of threatened Europeans, thus appealing to the second World War iconography that so animates the British mind, the pro-EU vote might be even bigger. Support for Nato membership is around 78 per cent – a remarkably high figure. There is growing support for co-operating with European partners on security. In February 2025, a YouGov poll of nearly 4,000 British people showed 72 per cent support (42 per cent “strongly”, 30 per cent “somewhat”) for greater UK-EU co-operation on defence and security issues.
Now think about the disaster that Brexit has been for the UK economy. Brexit has reduced long-term UK productivity by 4 per cent. Both exports and imports are around 15 per cent lower in the long run than if the UK had remained in the EU. The UK’s ‘trade intensity’ (a hugely significant figure that measures trade as a proportion of GDP) has fallen significantly, much more than other advanced economies. New trade deals with non-EU countries have not had a material impact. Far from the Global Britain that was promised, Britain has turned in on itself. The UK has gone from being the fastest-growing G7 economy before the referendum to the slowest in recent years.
[ Burning question for Europe now is how to deal with an elected American tyrantOpens in new window ]
On the streets, the average person blames Brexit for day-to-day economic worries. For example, only 7 per cent of Britons believe leaving the EU helped lower prices in shops, while 63 per cent said Brexit has been a factor “fuelling higher inflation and the cost of living”. Similarly, just 10 per cent feel Brexit has improved their personal finances, versus 35 per cent who say it has directly made them worse off financially. Standing back a bit, an independent report by Cambridge Econometrics (commissioned by the mayor of London) estimated that by 2023 the UK economy was almost £140 billion smaller than it would have been without Brexit.
This is a calamity. Drilling down, this topline figure means the average British person was £2,000 (approximately €2,385) worse off in an nual income in 2023 (and the average Londoner about £3,400, or €4,054, worse off). There are now two million fewer jobs across the UK than there would have been had Brexit not happened and nearly 300,000 fewer jobs in London alone.
Given this evidence, a new referendum on Europe looks not possible but probable. The changed geopolitical and strategic outlook means the US is retreating from Europe, and some in Britain have just realised that they are in Europe after all. There is a British prime minister who is relishing his new “War PM” role, and he realises that to win the next election he has to come up with something significant. How does he crush Reform? He labels them “Trumpian” – a definite vote-killer, even in England. He might define himself as a man of vision and deliver the UK back into Europe as an equal to Germany and France, unified by their commitment to democracy against tyranny.
Could that all happen?
I wouldn’t bet against it!
