Peter Mandelson’s speech was a blunt message to the British and European establishment: it is time to forge a partnership with the America that exists, not an idealized version from the past. His defense of Donald Trump was a call to abandon wishful thinking and engage pragmatically with the political forces currently shaping the United States.
The ambassador’s core argument is that Trump’s rise is not an anomaly but a reflection of deep-seated trends in American society. By describing Trump as a “consequence” of a failing system, he urged his audience to stop treating him as a temporary problem and start seeing his movement as a durable political reality.
This realism underpins his entire proposal for a tech alliance. He believes it is futile to wait for a return to a more conventional American presidency. The strategic challenges posed by China are too immediate. Therefore, the UK must find a way to work with Trump’s “America First” agenda and find common ground within it.
This approach is a direct rejection of what he called “lazy thinking”—the idea that one can or should pivot away from the US due to ideological distaste for its leader. For Mandelson, the national interest requires dealing with the world as it is, and that means finding a constructive way to partner with Donald Trump.