AGI – “As our closest allies, the United Kingdom and the United States will continue to work together to protect our shared values of freedom and democracy”: behind Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer‘s congratulations on Donald Trump‘s “historic victory” there lies a “nightmare”, as the English media define it. Far from making Trump’s return “prosper”, as written in the message, it could definitively undermine the ‘special’ relationship with Washington, which is more indispensable than ever for post-Brexit London. Starmer, a 61-year-old lawyer exponent of the ‘soft left’, vegetarian and moderate, is the furthest thing from the ‘Maga’ tycoon.
He has always avoided attacking the former president directly, even after the assault on Capitol Hill, and assures that he “created a good personal relationship” when they met in New York in September. The Labor Party, however, has already entered the sights of the Trumpists: on October 23, the former president’s electoral committee had presented a complaint against the Labor Party before the Federal Electoral Commission (FEC), accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” and “contributions illegal” because its volunteers had served on Kamala Harris’ campaign.
The new Tory opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, quickly reminded the PM how Labor had opposed Trump speaking at Westminster when he visited Britain in 2017. “Starmer will demonstrate that Labor is more than an organisation. of political apprentices inviting him to speak to the Commons on his next visit?”, she asked. A visit that could be embarrassing for the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, who in 2018 called Trump “a misogynist and sociopath with neo-Nazi sympathies” and “a grave threat to the international order that has underpinned Western progress for so long “.
Moreover, there are numerous dossiers of potential conflict between the USA and the United Kingdom, from weapons to Ukraine to the trade agreement that not even the political courtship of former conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson had managed to secure. The then president had limited himself to returning the warm welcome by calling Johnson “the British Trump”. The one across the Channel who celebrates Trump is Nigel Farage: the leader of Reform UK who was on the front line for Brexit is a friend of the tycoon and was in the USA for these presidential elections. His confidence in the president risks distancing Trump even further from a British prime minister whom the Republican candidate himself had defined as “extreme left” during the election campaign.
