The bromance between Keir Starmer and Donald Trump is quite something to behold. The American president’s swooning over his latest love object is more than matched by the British prime minister’s puppy-love simpering.
“I like him a lot,” Trump declared to the world from the Oval Office in January.
“He’s a very nice guy,” he expounded in February.
Starmer gushed back: “I like and respect him”.
READ MORE
By last weekend, they seemed ready to put a ring on it in Scotland as they flew together, first on the president’s Marine One helicopter, then on his Air Force One jet. To the disappointment of millions of voyeurs, the pair refrained from holding hands as they disembarked for dinner-á-deux in Aberdeen.
“I like this man a lot,” Trump reiterated for the benefit of slow learners.
They’ve even started making dates in public. After Trump hosted him at his Scottish golf club, Starmer proposed taking the American to a football match next time.
Any wonder Melania stayed at home?
The president can’t stop talking about the new man in his life. At a press conference about the tariff deal that he coerced the EU into, he meandered from what began as a seeming tribute to the bloc into a paean to his darling Keir.
“I think he’ll be very happy with this,” Trump blabbed, despite – or, maybe, because of – the fact that the UK is not a member of the EU.
[ Why did the EU sign a tariff deal overwhelmingly favourable to the US?Opens in new window ]
The sight of young swains playing footsie in company has its charm but, when two grown men – collective age 142 next month – are at it, you have to wonder what’s in it for each of them. Opposites attract, they say, and the Labour Party leader has repeatedly insisted their bromance works in spite of a political chasm between him and the Maga megalomaniac. Perhaps he doth protest too much.
When Trump landed in Scotland and chastised Europe for admitting “bad people” over its borders, he was preaching to the convert standing next to him. Starmer, who has warned that immigration will make Britain “an island of strangers”, gladly recited: “We’ve returned 35,000 – in fact, in the first year of this Labour Government – of people who shouldn’t be here”.
Cash-strapped Britain says it cannot afford a £1m payment due to the International Fund for Ireland peace initiative but it’s preparing to spend at least ten-times that on Trump’s “unprecedented” and “historic” second state visit.
Starmer has promised it will be like nothing anybody has ever seen before. Oh, boy, he’s even talking like Trump now. Some of his tactics are starting to look familiar too. Using the two-state solution as a bargaining chip to make Israel ease up on its mass slaughter in Gaza is straight out of Trump’s playbook of bluff.
Does the prime minister not understand that two states are the objective; not some convenient threat?
[ Was Keir Starmer pushed on Palestinian statehood or did he wait for right moment?Opens in new window ]
Starmer’s obsequiousness is embarrassing but that’s the payback when you pair up with a passive-aggressive partner. Trump keeps humiliating him – rabbiting on about how much he likes Nigel Farage and vilifying Labour’s London mayor Sadiq Khan as “nasty” and “stupid”, while Starmer sits grinning beside him.
It’s unedifying to watch, but it reaps rewards. The 10 per cent US-UK tariff rate is the lowest Trump has agreed with any country.
That’s the quid pro quo. Ireland knows how it works because this country spent the best part of a century póg-a-thóin-ing Uncle Sam as a national survival strategy. If Ronald Reagan wants jigs and reels, he gets them.
If George W Bush wants to invade Iraq without fear of being arrested on visiting Ireland and being sent for trial to The Hague, sure, whatever it takes. Uncle Sam wants to direct rendition flights or soldiers through Shannon Airport? Be our guest. Most obliging of you, says the US, turning its rivers green and rolling out the red carpet for the Taoiseach on Paddy’s Day.
This country is in no position to scoff at Starmer’s antics.
Though, admittedly, it is tempting, especially after that London Times caricature of three dancing Joe Bidens dressed as leprechauns with swinging pints of stout when the last US president visited here in 2023. There may have been sour grapes involved. Britain had spectacularly lost the ancestry tug-o’-war between Biden’s three-parts English and five-parts Irish genealogy.
As if to rub it in, the former president claimed his mother had once slept on a hotel floor after being told the British queen had previously stayed in the same room and fondly recalled his Auntie Gertie assuring him: “Your father is not a bad man. He’s just English”.
“You’re welcome to him,” droves of English Twitter (as X was known) users retweeted.
Not all of us over here wanted him. Joey’s Irishness was full of blarney, no matter how sincerely he meant it. Everywhere he went, he delivered his single transferable speech about his Irish moral values. Then he went back to United States and sent “ironclad support” to Israel for its onslaught on Gaza along with killing machinery to do the job.
On his last Paddy’s Day visit as Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar was skating on thin ice in the Oval Office to the soundtrack of calls back home for the visit to be cancelled.
Britain has adopted Ireland’s old role, sycophantically courting an American president with some of its blood in his veins. While the short game may prove profitable for Starmer, there will be long-term repercussions. The British prime minister has been trying to establish Brexited Britain as a European superpower, allying with France. That requires him to ride two horses simultaneously.
Trump despises the EU, falsely claiming its sole raison d’être is to “rip off” the US. He would be sorely miffed if he thought Starmer was two-timing him with Emanuel Macron. And Trump can be a vindictive former friend. See Elon Musk, Jeffrey Epstein, Rupert Murdoch, et al.
In Turnberry last weekend, RTÉ’s London correspondent Tommy Meskill asked Trump if he planned to visit Ireland.
“I will. I love Doonbeg,” he said, name-checking his golf resort for any potential paying customers who were watching. “I’ll go.”
Right back at you Britain – you’re welcome to him.
