Starmer cannot cope with Trump’s lawless world
A decent man lost in a time of scoundrels
The feebleness of Britain is evident. Donald Trump attacked Iran even though Kier Starmer and Europe’s other leaders wanted a diplomatic solution to the nuclear crisis.
Right until the last minute Starmer was sure there would be no attack. At the G7 on Tuesday, he dismissed talk that the Americans would join Israel’s war. “There’s nothing the President said that suggests he’s about to get involved in this conflict.”
That worked out well, then. At least Trump did not demand access to UK bases when he attacked. If this war continues, and if Starmer allows the US to use them, the discipline of the Parliamentary Labour party might well snap and Starmer could be in serious political trouble.
Even if it doesn’t come to that – even if the world is lucky and the Iranian crisis winds down – Trump’s dismissal of the UK illustrates a wider problem.
Abroad, we have little or no influence with a Trump administration that indulges the European far right. Our supposedly “special relationship” is with a US “ally” that is unreliable, capricious and potentially hostile
It is as if we are chained to a lunatic.
Meanwhile, back at home, the Starmer government won two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons on just one-third of the vote. Since taking power almost a year ago, even that thin level of support has collapsed.
For the Lowdown, I talked to Rafael Behr of the Guardian, one of the most interesting Westminster commentators around, about the government’s weaknesses at home and abroad.
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Below is an edited version of our conversation. I began by pointing out that Behr recently wrote about how
Trump “claims simply to want deals with dictators, but he seems also to crave validation from them. By contrast, he thinks it is humiliating for the US commander-in-chief to be seated at a round table as the peer of a German chancellor or the prime minister of Canada – barely a proper country. The idea of coordinating foreign and trade policy on the basis of shared respect for political pluralism and the rule of law is an idea Trump finds absurd, if he even understands it.
His agenda is the dissolution of the west. The US’s former allies need to recognise the magnitude of that ambition.”
I asked whether Labour understood the scale of the challenge to old Atlanticist assumptions.
Rafael Behr: “Does Keir Starmer get the sheer enormity of what is happening. I think some people around him do. I'm not persuaded that he really does. I think he's ultimately a very small “c” conservative person who thinks you can just fix things by making do and mending around the status quo and hoping that that process will just see you through.”
But what might any British leader do, even if they can grasp how the world is changing? Not much, maybe, or at least not at first.
Rafael Behr: “The people at the top of British institutions can simultaneously understand exactly how toxic and horrendous the Trump administration is, while also recognizing that at a very fundamental level the infrastructure of British national security is hardwired into the Pentagon and the American Intelligence Services.
“You can both think we're chained to a lunatic, as you put it, but also that if we want a software upgrade to make our fighter planes work, we have to ask the lunatic for permission because we are absolutely dependent on the US for our national security.”
Then the UK must consider the not wholly hysterical question of whether the US far right will ever give up power.
Behr puts it like this
Rafael Behr: “Even when you recognize the enormity of what Trump represents and the undoing of the American liberal democratic constitutional republic, there is an unclear question, that you wrote very well recently on your Substack about whether or not we should call it ‘fascism”.
Maybe all it will take for America to return to normal is for Trump to die or leave power. Maybe without his dark charisma the American far right will fall apart.
But maybe not. It’s not wholly fanciful to imagine an end to American democracy, as the crooks around Trump decide that they dare not allow an election defeat that would lead to their imprisonment.
If liberal democracy dies in the US, what the hell does Britain do then?
The right has no answers. Farage is Trump’s man and Badenoch is simply incapable of giving voice to traditional conservative wariness of the USA
Behr and I criticised them both, of course, we can do that in our sleep.
But I was struck by his scepticism about Keir Starmer. Behr, one of the more moderate voices at the Guardian, now believes the PM’s intellectual failings afflict domestic and foreign policy.
Rafael Behr: “They have the same root cause: the Prime Minister does not have a developed concept of Britain's place in the world and where he wants to take it.”
In foreign policy. it is as if he thinks
“Well, OK, we've got Trump, we've got possibly the entire Western alliance collapsing. But I don't want to think about that. I don't want to see what the way through is. I'll make some personal friendships. I'll cut a few minor deals and everything will be all right.
“At home he does not understand how the digital revolution has changed everything… To have a prime minister who is so intrinsically analogue … makes him unable to meet the seriousness of the moment. That sounds terribly pessimistic…and I really want it not to be true, but that's the conclusion I'm coming to.”
Tellingly Behr said that for the first time he was hearing Labour MPs talk about finding a new leader.
Rafael Behr: “People on the left and right of the Labour Party were tearing their hair out when Trump announced his Liberation Day tariffs.
“It was such an obvious platform [for Starner] to stand on and say,’ all bets are off. Everything's changed’.”
But Starmer couldn’t do it. Just as he cannot make the social democratic case that we need to raise taxes to build a better and fairer society for everyone.
As Behr concluded:
“It's very difficult to see how the progressive side of politics can get itself organized if it can't make and win the argument that solidarity through tax and spend policy makes everyone better off.”
If the centre-left loses, then we are back to where we have been since at least 2016.
Rafael Behr: “The right says government is rubbish
and we need tax cuts for ourselves and our rich friends. Then when people become enraged it feeds off the anger generated by xenophobia and confected anti-leftism to get itself back into power. No one seems in Europe or the US able to articulate the counter argument to that in an effective, charismatic way.”
Just so. Perhaps the centre-left only wins when it is led by brilliant politicians. If so, it is high time we found some.
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Below are two pieces from behind the paywall to give you a taste of what is on offer. The first is the article Behr mentioned on the dangers of throwing around accusations of fascism.
Don't drop the F-bomb!
Should liberal Americans get out? Should they take what they can carry and scram, skedaddle, head for the hills and claim asylum when they get there?
Then there is a piece on an idea that Keir Starmer seems incapable of grasping: Donald Trump is an enemy of liberal democracy
Trump’s true enemy isn’t China or Russia but liberal democracy
Americans looking with some desperation for a reputable rationale behind the betrayal of Ukraine have reached for the comfort of realpolitik.
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Best wishes,
Nick
I forget who said it ,perhaps Ian Dunt, but whoever it was said you understand Starmer better if you see him as a hopeless starter- DPP, Labour party, Number 10. It takes him a while to grasp a new job or concept, but when he does he's effective. The problem is , the world is now changing and throwing new things at him so quickly, taking time to adjust is a luxury he doesn't have.
It is unfair to blame Starmer when you look back at previous Prime Ministers. Even Blair, the most recent Labour PM with a working majority of 160, had a delusional belief in the capacity of the West to resolve the problems of the world. Then Brown, who could not answer questions on National Security despite sitting beside Blair for 10 years of PMQ. Let us skip the Tory wanabees, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak and ask where is the leadership of what was once the most powerful country in the West? An author of a spy book, published in 1979, which revealed Anthony Blunt as the fifth member of the Cambridge Spy Ring, estimated that sometime in 1942 the leadership of the West went from Britain to America. It is still America that dominates the security of what we know as the free world, however much we hate it. As for Labour changing leadership? To whom? There are no giants any more. I remember October 1964 when Harold Wilson commanded a front bench with Roy Jenkins, who had served at Bletchley Park during the war, others had similar achievements too numerous to mention. That generation has gone and with it the likes of Corbyn and his Momentum clique, Miliband minor, who was a trade union puppet and the nameless who sat on Corbyn front bench.