After a year of speculation about how Keir Starmer would work with Donald Trump, the situation in the US has changed dramatically. A flagging Joe Biden is no longer the Democratic presidential candidate; in his place is Kamala Harris, his resurgent vice president. She goes into her party’s conference as the bookies’ favourite, with polls suggesting she has a narrow lead over Trump. Most Labour ministers are privately welcoming this change of direction, as they would prefer to work with a president who hails from their sister party across the pond. Starmer and Harris both have legal backgrounds and face the same challenges on crime, migration and unconventional opponents. Although much of Whitehall favours a Democratic victory, Starmer’s team may find it difficult to forge the close ties that other prime ministers and presidents have had in the past.

The next three months will be a difficult balancing act for the British government. As foreign secretary, David Lammy is keen to present himself as a pragmatist. Last month he boasted of his “common ground” with JD Vance and declared: “We will work with whoever the United States puts in the White House.” Such words are understandable given the urgent need to build relationships with Trump after the posturing of Lammy and others during the Corbyn years. But the risk is that it could alienate and anger Lammy’s team, whose campaign is geared towards portraying Trump and Vance as extreme, unstable and just plain “weird.” Any attempt to normalise Trump will go down badly with Democrats, who are extremely sensitive to the impression that US allies are preparing for life with Trump.

Here lies a warning from 1992 – the last time a presidential election and a general election were held in the same year. John Major won re-election in April, but his Conservative colleague George HW Bush lost to the underdog Bill Clinton seven months later. There was a lingering suspicion in some Democratic circles that Major’s team had openly plotted to win Bush. Two Tory bigwigs advised Bush’s team to focus their attacks on Clinton’s character, while the Home Office became embroiled in a row over whether Clinton was a “conscientious objector” from Vietnam. There is no indication that Labour will be so overt this time. But it is a reminder of the risks Lammy and the Foreign Office face in trying to keep both camps on their side in the 80 days before the American election.

If Harris wins on November 5, Britain will likely play a smaller role in Harris’ worldview than it did under Biden. While the president’s team has closely followed the debates over the Northern Ireland Protocol, his vice president has a much less Eurocentric perspective. She has less experience, less contact and less affinity with Europe. Biden is from the east coast, Harris from the west coast. He places a lot of emphasis on his Irish ancestry, her roots are Indian and Jamaican. He is a lifelong foreign policy expert and heads the prestigious Senate committee, she has little experience here and few experts of her own. For much of 2022 and 2023, she has been Biden’s “deputy” on the international stage. At last year’s Munich Security Conference, she was the “least impressive leader” to meet with Rishi Sunak, according to a member of the British delegation. “She’s just not interested in Europe,” says another Whitehall veteran.

That’s not to say, of course, that Starmer and his team have nothing to offer Harris. To take a recent example, Britain will inevitably be drawn into the transatlantic debate over social media and Elon Musk’s ownership of X – a topic that the Vice President is very interested in. But it would be naive to think that a Harris victory would guarantee Starmer a close relationship with the most powerful official in the Western world.

This article originally appeared on The viewer‘s UK website.