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Cleopatra to America's Caesar. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump’s election victory is a nightmare for Keir Starmer. Trump not only embodies much that Starmer holds in obvious contempt, but his very presence in the White House captures much of Britain’s essential weakness in 2024. Whatever Labour MPs think of him, the incoming US President has more power to undermine British prosperity — and therefore their own chances of reelection — than anyone else on the planet, including, perhaps, their own leader. Like Cleopatra trying to survive the great imperial power struggles of the late Roman republic, Starmer has little choice but to submit to the new American Caesar and hope for the best.
Despite the inevitable hand wringing in Westminster, however, Trump’s election provides a political opportunity for Starmer that, intriguingly, has not gone unnoticed inside No.10. From a purely partisan perspective, those close to Starmer see Kamala Harris’s crushing defeat not only as a personal rejection, but also as an ideological repudiation of the kind of progressivism she came to represent. In their view, Harris’s brand of “be more woke” liberalism is just as antithetical to the voters Labour needs here as it was to the voters the Democrats needed across the Atlantic.
To understand the tensions at the heart of the Starmer government over its response to Trump’s victory, it is important to distinguish between the historical, organisational and emotional ties between Labour and the Democrats, which sparked Trump’s ire during the presidential campaign, and the divergent political projects taking shape in London and Washington. Those close to Morgan McSweeney, Keir Starmer’s influential chief of staff, simply do not look to San Francisco, Washington or Ottawa for inspiration as Tony Blair might have done in the Nineties. Instead, they look to the solid and rather staid social democracies of northern Europe. To understand Starmerism, in other words, look to Copenhagen not California.
The interesting question at the heart of this Labour government, however, is not so much what McSweeney’s vision of a successful Labour strategy looks like — for that much is clear — but how widely it is shared within the wider Labour movement. Beyond a few figures in No.10, who else shares McSweeney’s instinctive eye-rolling alienation with the obsessions and prejudices of North American liberalism and, somewhere in their soul, saw Harris’s defeat as deserved?
Fundamentally, many in Starmer’s No.10 believe that their “project” to remake the Labour Party, which started in opposition, is only half finished. To complete it, the party needs to develop far less instinctive sympathy with the kind of progressivism Harris represented — and far more sympathy with the ordinary concerns of Middle England. If the Labour Party is to be more than a Biden-style interregnum between periods of conservative rule, they believe, the party needs to be shaken out of its comfort zone on many of the issues which cost Harris in the election, from immigration to the wider “woke” wars dominating the post-mortems now being written about why her campaign failed.
Harris’s defeat, in short, is both a portent of what could happen to the Labour Party at the next election and a tool Starmer can use to stop that from happening, though only if he has the political skill to do so. Put bluntly, while President Trump will test Starmer’s diplomatic skills to the limit, his victory could help persuade a reluctant Labour Party that it needs to do far more to reassure voters that it shares their instincts. That, at least, is the theory.
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SubscribeNothing can save Starmer from his own blundering incompetence and arrogance. The man is a “hole in the air”, and having risen without trace, will also sink into oblivion.
Starmer will go into a sulk when he is asked whether he intends to fulfil manifesto promises, made to get him elected but never intended for implementation.
The American irritation at having Labour aparatchiks actively working for Kamala in the US is not inconsiderable. It might even remind people of the role British intelligence played in fabricating the Russiagate scam. As far as the economy goes, British weakness is caused by green delusions about energy and climate. And the open immigration shoved down the throats of the British people.
The fun will start with tariffs and defence spending. They’re linked. Trump is much more likely to look benignly on trade with Britain, if we start to make serious headway with pulling our weight in NATO.
Reeves didn’t plan for spending on serious rearmament. Either taxes for ordinary people go up, or the NHS can whistle for the promised cash.
For Starmer, there are no good options.
We already face huge tariffs when trading with the USA. Self-imposed green taxes, net zero transition taxes, employment taxes, investment taxes, and more.
Industrial electricity is now four times more expensive in the UK than the USA. Natural gas is five times more expensive. The non-wage cost of employing someone is twice as expensive. From finance to data management to engineering, like for like services and products created in the UK now have far higher non-wage input costs than those created in the USA, directly attributable to UK government policies.
Only far higher US wages (on average about £17k according to the ONS) ensure the UK doesn’t face a complete economic rout in trade with the USA. But this only serves to accelerate another “tariff” UK businesses face: loss of the most highly skilled workers and business creators. For over a decade there’s been an accelerating trend of highly skilled Brits leaving for the USA, hidden by the vast tide of immigration to the UK from poorer parts of the world. This has not been an equivalent exchange.
Still UK and European citizens keep voting for more government and more taxes and more luxury beliefs. But the very thing that pays for all the largesse is shrinking under the burden and we hurtle towards de-industrialisation without any new technology unicorns to save us from backwardness.
Net Zero looks more like Year Zero.
Nothing about pissing your money down a green hole? Everything else is meaningless unless you can fix the economy.
To be fair, there’s plenty of scope for that discussion elsewhere; this article is focused on the Trump-Starmer relationship, both personal and political. As per usual, the author pinpoints the pinch points with precision.
That’s exactly what I’m talking about. When the us starts providing their industry with cheap power how competitive will the uk be? And no it won’t be fair.
The writer is a political journalist, not an economic one. It’s that simple.
The economy and net zero can be the subject of plenty of other articles. What’s not to understand?
You also misinterpret the UK expression “To be fair”.
Starmer is no different than Harris, Biden and the dozen or so incompetent leaders pulling down the west. I think they are incapable of identifying their own weaknesses. They are trapped in ideological nonsense that dooms them to failure.
“To understand Starmerism, in other words, look to Copenhagen not California.” Hmmm. That’ll be Denmark that refused to join the Euro, ignores its Schengen agreement and has ended free movement at its border with Germany, has just clamped down hard on youth gender transitioning, now has a lower effective marginal personal tax rate than the UK and is cutting taxes next year, and is ranked higher than the USA (and a lot higher than the UK) for economic and market freedom. If Starmer is definitely looking toward Copenhagen, he needs to ask his *very close friend* Lord Ali for another pair of new glasses…
As an aside, it typifies the numbing deadhand of statist bureaucrats that a key change they think is needed is new offices. Magically, government becomes smarter and more effective when they have offices with £500 coffee makers. Then again, Starmer did win an election after his *very supportive chum* Lord Ali gave him a new apartment with a very snazzy coffee maker…
Beyond a few figures in No.10, who else shares McSweeney’s instinctive eye-rolling alienation with the obsessions and prejudices of North American liberalism and, somewhere in their soul, saw Harris’s defeat as deserved?
ME!
And I didn’t see Harris’s defeat as deserved “somewhere in my soul” but with my own eyes and felt it with an absolute conviction for several reasons.
Schadenfreude is a rather unbecoming thing but I have allowed myself to ride the wave of it for a week and watch the Democrats stew in their own mess. I’ll stop soon and return to more civilised behaviour, but gosh I’ve enjoyed it.
Don’t stop – keep enjoying. Civilized behaviour is overrated in some circumstances.
Elite opinion is keen to emphasise that Kamala pulled back from wokery and campaigned on a centrist ticket, but the damage was done a long time ago and not so quickly escapable.
Labour has two issues that they will struggle with despite McSweeney and Starmer’s best efforts: wokery and migration. Their troubles here will come from all sides, not least their backbenchers. Badenoch will ruthlessly attack on the former and Farage on the latter. As it stands today, it is tempting to say that Starmer’s only hope is that the Right splits between the Tories and Reform and offers him a path through in 2029.
However, a financial crash is coming, perhaps one so large that it eclipses 2008, perhaps one so large that it ends fiat altogether.
The factors behind that crash have been decades in the making, but Trump will be blamed for it by his opponents at home and globally. How Trump negotiates that crisis will determine whether his style of government becomes dominant and even whether a return of the world to the Westphalian model is still possible.
I agree, a global crash is in the pipeline. I have long thought it would be around about now, but that hasn’t happened, but I honestly think sooner rather than later from here. I also agree, it’s gonna be a biggie.
“…Imagine the moment it is discovered that a dual British citizen has been rounded up and separated from his children…”
Then, I have no doubt at all that in that situation the dual British citizen and the children would be deported to, er, Britain – because they are, ‘documented’. But the whole point about ‘undocumented migrants’ is that they are clumping ‘undocumented’ – invariably deliberately so to take advantage of human rights laws. The dual citizen and family, having been made the responsibility of the Labour government, would then be duly processed in the standard way – 4* hotel, private medical care, the usual, assuming they managed to divest themselves of their British citizenship documentation enroute, otherwise they would have to join the rest of us in the queue for a six week wait for a doctor’s appointment.
“Starmer cannot run too far from the core instincts of the Labour Party”
I don’t think how Starmer and Labour react to the Trump win is a matter of ‘political skill’, it’s a matter of individual and collective ideology. The point the author made about the circumstances of Blair’s ousting proves the point – and that was Blair in his pomp.
“And yet, who knows what ramifications there will be for Starmer should he go to war against Trump on any particular issue”
You have a template for this from Trump’s first presidency and Merkel – public humiliation and the country would pay the price as Germany did.
Ideologically Starmer cannot and will not be influenced by anything the Trump government does. The appointment of Lammy showed obvious contempt for the Republican side of the US. Add to that the ridiculous sending of advisers to join the Harris campaign further entrenches that contempt.
Starmer is a creature of the state. They are his people. The talk of a 4 day week is just another way of strengthening that bond. The idea that he would attempt any Elon ‘fix’ of a broken system is laughable. The civil service, NHS etc can carry on happy in the knowledge that nothing will change. McSweeney might want to do it. But Starmer. Really?!
No. Starmer will do nothing but make things worse. Tough talk on easy targets (the rioters). Misdirection on the tricky stuff (the perpetrator).
He is a lawyer. If there’s a law he can use then he’s all in. Big vision. Bold thinking. Best look elsewhere.