U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer flew to Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to meet with President Donald Trump, only days after French President Emmanuel Macron met with Trump on Monday. “Many European politicians are trying to cozy up to President Trump,” said Peter McIlvenna, co-founder of U.K.-based free speech alliance Hearts of Oak, who works in the British House of Lords, on “Washington Watch.” Even those with “full Trump Derangement Syndrome” are “trying to delete past tweets — let’s put it that way,” he added.

McIlvenna suggested “two of the key conversations” between Trump and Starmer will revolve around trade and defense. “President Trump sees the unfairness of … how the U.S. is treated with the EU [European Union], and he’s talked about big trade tariffs on the EU. The U.K. said there is a relationship to be had.”

Starmer’s sudden warming to Trump is noteworthy in itself, McIlvenna added. “He’s never been a fan of President Trump,” he explained. “But he seems to be eating humble pie and seems to be speaking Trump’s praises.” Starmer is an ideological progressive from the left-wing Labour Party, but he has evidently decided it is more important for him not to alienate the U.S. president.

Indeed, Trump’s tariff threats seem to strike fear in many nations, and the president has already used them to wrest concessions from Colombia and Mexico. The prospect of U.S. tariffs, combined with a change in U.S. policy on European defense, has European leaders quaking in their boots. “Europe is still, at least in some degree, reeling from President Trump’s return to the White House,” remarked Family Research Council President Tony Perkins. “There’s plenty of humble pie being served all over, all across the globe right now.”

Yet this international environment is different than the one existing four years ago, said McIlvenna. “If Trump had taken office in 2021, the landscape would have been very different. It would have been an antagonistic Europe that would have been a barrier to cooperation and trade between Europe and the U.S.” There are “a lot of politicians reaching out now where, I think, four years ago, they wouldn’t [have.]”

There are several reasons for this change, most conspicuously Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the longest, deadliest armed conflict on the continent since World War II. European contributions would not have saved Ukraine without American assistance, and European nations are worried that, if Russia successfully conquers Ukraine, the former empire may not be content to stop there. “The European Union is in a time of existential crisis, and into that drops President Trump,” McIlvenna explained.

Another reason is “the rise of the populist right all across Europe,” McIlvenna continued. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who won a 2022 election on a populist platform, spoke Saturday to America’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), “saying she stood shoulder-to-shoulder with President Trump,” McIlvenna noted. Then on Sunday, the right-populist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) placed second in a German national election with 20.8% of the vote, doubling its previous performance. With growing support in Europe for populist policies, “that means there is cooperation to be had, there’s a relationship to be had,” explained McIlvenna.

Russian aggression and a populist resurgence create another factor affecting the posture of European leaders toward Trump: a renewed competition over which country and government will lead Europe. “Macron, the French president, was over visiting President Trump just days ago, and now it’s Keir Starmer’s chance,” observed McIlvenna. “They are vying to reshape Europe. And they’re vying to be the strongman of Europe.” Instead of socialist Europe presenting a united front against Trumpian populism, now European leaders are competing for preeminence with each other. And in such a competition, having American support would be a major boost.

Europe’s attitude adjustment is not only rhetorical, but has translated in real and surprising policy changes, at least where the U.K. is concerned. On Tuesday, Starmer pledged to increase defense spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 and 3% by 2035, finding the cash by cutting overseas development aid from 0.5% of GDP to 0.3%. The U.K. already has “the largest defense spending in Europe,” as a percentage of GDP, said McIlvenna, except for countries bordering Russia (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Armenia, and Azerbaijan).

“It was [a] shock in the House of Commons today whenever this was being discussed. And Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the so-called Conservative Party, tried to actually hold Keir Starmer’s feet to the fire and mock him for this, [but] he seemed to get past those attacks fairly easily,” McIlvenna mentioned. “It’s shocking! We have a far-left government who wants to increase defense spending and cut aid.”

“And that,” he concluded, “is because of the Trump effect. There’s no other reason that could happen, but because of President Trump.”