Sir Keir Starmer has made much of his closeness to Donald Trump. In his hastily arranged trade deal announcement, where he patched in by phone to the Oval Office for a cross-Atlantic press conference broadcast live, he made a point of calling Trump “Donald” several times.
But for all the hype surrounding the UK-US trade deal, it is another global power-broker who really counts. The woman who holds the key to the UK’s economic fortunes is not necessarily Chancellor Rachel Reeves, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Mitigating the US tariffs may be important for UK jobs, but as EU officials pointed out to The i Paper this week, Britain is still in a worse trading position with America than before Trump. Trump’s deal, they argue, was a “shakedown“. The one that really counts is with Europe.
So when von der Leyen visits London on Monday for the first Brexit reset summit, much will be at stake – with wrangling over easier travel for young people, food standards and fishing rights all to be ironed out.
Starmer, to be fair, has not been shy in advertising his closeness to von der Leyeneither, posing for pally photos and warm European cheek-to-cheek greetings. But he is up against a formidable politician and negotiator. And as someone who is described as so guarded and suspicious, few really know her.
Ambitious, assiduous, abstemious former punk
Von der Leyen, now in her sixth year as Commission President, has a reputation in Brussels for being ambitious, assiduous, aloof and abstemious. At the celebrations for Europe Day in Brussels last Saturday, for example, a request for VDL as she is known, to meet and greet visitors was met with a firm “no”, according to one of the organisers.
When she meets Starmer she will be returning to the city where she spent a thrilling year as a punky student indulging in clubbing, concert-going and late-night partying.
She was sent to London partly for her own safety: her father, Ernst Albrecht, a prominent German politician as minister-president of Lower Saxony, had received death threats. In 1978-79, Von der Leyen quietly enrolled in LSE and took on the alias Rose Ladson. It was only a brief interlude in a life and career that has been defined by hard work.
She was born in Ixelles, the Belgian capital’s trendy neighbourhood, in 1958, and went to the same European School that Boris Johnson attended. Her father was a Commission official in 1958, later serving as director-general for competition.
Fluent in French, English, and German, she is polished, methodical and a workaholic, rarely leaving her apartment on the 13th floor of the Commission’s Berlaymont headquarters.
Seven children and entering politics at 44
After London, she switched to medicine at Hannover Medical School before marrying and having seven children. After a brief stint supporting her husband, Heiko von der Leyen, in Stanford, California, she returned to teach at Hannover Medical School, only running for political office when she was 44.
A staunch member of the Christian Democrat Union (CDU) party, like her father, she rose to take up various stints as a government minister under chancellor Angela Merkel, before, in 2019, being named as the surprise compromise to become the Commission’s first-ever woman president.
In Brussels and Berlin, the 66-year-old is respected even if her steely and stiff character rarely elicits affection.
But for Starmer, she is the key to his much-vaunted reset of relations.
Von der Leyen’s 19 May visit to London comes amid a world transformed. Trump’s return to the White House has reignited transatlantic tensions. Reciprocal tariffs loom, with Trump announcing mounting levies on EU trade, and Brussels hinting at plans to tax US digital giants like Meta, X and Google.
Trump has made little secret of his loathing of the EU, saying it was formed to “screw” the US and that it is, “in many ways nastier than China.” Von der Leyen has used more diplomatic language to address him. “The West as we knew it no longer exists,” she said last month, amid rapidly deteriorating relations with the US, which has forced Europe to look elsewhere for allies and partners.
Mutual antipathy but ‘so fantastic’
For all their mutual antipathy, after a brief chat at Pope Francis’s funeral, Trump recently described her as “so fantastic”. However, the EU’s retaliatory playbook is ready: levies on tech giants, tit-fot-tat tariffs and full-scale application of the EU’s new anti-coercion mechanism.
It is a geopolitical chess game, and von der Leyen is positioning the EU as the reliable, rules-based partner in an increasingly chaotic world. “Europe is still a peace project. We don’t have bros or oligarchs making the rules,” she quipped in a recent German interview. “We don’t invade our neighbours. And we don’t punish them.”
Von der Leyen has already struck up a strong personal relationship with Starmer: both are unflashy, cautious and pragmatic.
They know that restoring links between London and Brussels is vital in a jittery geopolitical moment. Both are keen supporters of Ukraine, and they both talk about rearming Europe in the face of Russia’s menace, and Donald Trump’s threats to pull the US back from defending European allies.
Von der Leyen came into office shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic. Her early tenure was defined by bold decisions, including the procurement of vaccines – a role that would both define her leadership and, controversially, embroil her in a court case over undisclosed SMS exchanges with Pfizer’s CEO. On Wednesday, the EU’s top court ruled against the Commission’s decision to keep those messages secret, casting a shadow over her reputation for integrity and governance.
Ugly spat with Boris Johnson
During that time, she also engaged in an early, ugly spat with then-PM Boris Johnson as both threatened to block the other’s vaccines.
Nonetheless, her crisis management instincts have until now been politically rewarding. The EU not only weathered the pandemic but emerged much stronger. The Commission designed a €750bn pandemic recovery programme backed by unprecedented EU joint funding. The crisis gave the Commission newfound willingness to speak the language of hard power—a shift that von der Leyen has accelerated.
After she was confirmed for her second term last summer, she ruthlessly rearranged her college of 26 Commissioners, sidelining and – in the case of the outspoken Frenchman Thierry Breton – dismissing troublesome members. Her new team is seen as competent but docile.
Under her, the Commission has centralised communications and decision-making to a degree rarely seen. Critics describe her as regal, controlling and even secretive. Supporters call it decisive leadership in a fragmented union.
Criticism of top-down approach
Yet that same top-down approach has drawn criticism. Her handling of vaccine contracts, her tight grip over communications and her centralisation of financial decision-making have prompted unease even within her own institution. “We used to have a really collegiate system within the Commission, but now everything has to go through her,” one official said, describing the mood inside it as both deferential and strained.
Even her political allies say she can be haughty and dismissive. The European Parliament, which is dominated by her centre-right party, is taking legal action after the Commission bypassed lawmakers to create its €150bn SAFE loan programme to boost defence spending across the bloc.
“She has executive experience as a minister and now as President, and she likes dealing with national governments, but she sometimes forgets that there is a legislature too,” said one MEP who knows her. “While she is strong in areas like Ukraine, defence and trade, she nonetheless needs to work more closely with elected representatives.”
For Britain, von der Leyen’s presence in London is diplomatically loaded. This summit will highlight shared concerns – defence, migration and trade – but also the fissures of a post-Brexit relationship still marked by mutual suspicion.
Yet she has also made space for Britain in the EU’s broader European security and trade framework. “Europe has moved closer together,” she said in a recent interview. “We are involving Norway and the United Kingdom on important issues… We all share the same belief in Europe and in the European way of life.”
One EU diplomat said: “She was tested by two massive crises, the pandemic and the Ukraine war, and she learned that you have to knuckle down – and use these moments to concentrate power. It’s not inclusive and not pretty. But, well, she gets results.”