IN just 56 days, Donald Trump will be President of the United States.
Worried world leaders talk of Trump-proofing themselves against the return of The Don.
In just 56 days, Donald Trump will be President of the United States
But Keir Starmer is behaving like he is trying to irritate the President-elect with mixed messagesAlamy
AlamyStarmer got a grip-and-grin photo op with tyrannical Xi Jinping — Trump’s foremost enemy[/caption]
Yet I fear Sir Keir Starmer appears to be doing everything he possibly can to send mixed messages to the next leader of our closest ally.
Yes, the PM was up Trump Tower quicker than a greyhound to try to build bridges and has ordered his once bitterly hostile Cabinet to pipe down.
But when it comes to deeds not words, you could be forgiven for thinking he was trying to wind up the incoming US President.
Ever conscious that pro-Gaza Muslim voters threaten the seats of plenty more Labour MPs, No10 has refused to condemn the International Criminal Court’s absurd overreach in issuing an arrest warrant for the only democratically elected and accountable leader in the Middle East.
Downing Street has not ruled out cuffing Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu if the leader of our ally landed in London, instead insisting the UK would “comply with its legal obligations”.
Even Labour’s own Friends Of Israel group has branded the stance “perverse”, but I suspect the incoming Washington administration would have rather more choice words.
There is already public talk from Trump allies of “crushing” the UK’s economy if we complied with the court ruling in public, but Starmer’s love of international legal bodies is well versed.
And it appears he cannot look a gift horse in the mouth either.
After rushing through a bonkers deal to hand the British Indian Ocean Territory on the Chagos Islands over to Mauritius — and paying them to take it, for good measure — the Mauritian government was then obliterated at the ballot box.
America’s incoming top diplomat Marco Rubio has voiced the obvious threat that the deal poses from China, who have been all over Mauritius like a rash, given the US/UK base on the islands.
He will be Secretary of State in eight weeks’ time but his British counterpart-to-be, David Lammy, rather pathetically claimed it would all be OK this week because: “Donald Trump knows what a good deal looks like and this is a good deal.”
But it’s not a good deal. Paying someone else to take a vital UK strategic asset that has a direct impact on our relations with the US is a terrible deal.
However, instead of using the very obvious get-out clause that the ministers who agreed the deal have been booted out of power, I hear Starmer will instead dispatch his newly appointed National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell to the region to try to resurrect the accord.
After blowback over the PM’s jet-set first four months, which saw him out of the country on more than two dozen occasions, Starmer has finally told his aides to focus on the domestic picture for the next few months.
But what has he achieved for his travels?
Finally convincing the White House to drop its opposition to the use of UK-provided cruise missiles on Russian targets is undoubtedly an important win.
Bonkers deal
Yet his much trumpeted new pact with the Germans is dead in the water after being announced in the first few weeks of Starmer’s premiership — only to see Berlin plunged into political chaos.
And the PM’s last few weeks of summit surfing have been an embarrassment.
At the recent Commonwealth gathering in Samoa he was duffed up by global minnows over slavery reparations.
Most prominent world leaders could see that COP29 in Azerbaijan was going to be a flop and stayed well away.
But no, our Never-Here Keir jetted in and is now directly tainted by the latest farcical climate circus flop that could have been left to chief clown Ed Miliband.
Flying to the G20 in Brazil, the PM told hacks his number one priority for the summit was Ukraine, but then let Brazil remove calls for a Russian ceasefire from the formal conclusions, something No10 at least admitted was “disappointing”.
Grip-and-grin photo op
Oh well, at least Starmer got a grip-and-grin photo op with tyrannical Xi Jinping — Trump’s foremost enemy — just hours before China’s President banged up scores of Hong Kong protesters for decades.
Meanwhile, over at the UN in New York, the UK delegation has been leading the charge to have Brazil added to the permanent members of the Security Council.
There would be a seat for the Germans too, and the Japanese and Indians.
Hardly a Trump-friendly policy given the President-elect has said time and again that the US-bankrolled organisation is already taking the mickey to the tune of 18billion American taxpayers’ dollars a year.
And while Sir Keir was away last week, what a perfect time to sneak out half a billion pounds of defence cuts that will see a number of British ships and dozens of helicopters scrapped, just at a time when Trump is about to arrive and call for all hands to the deck when it comes to INCREASING European defence spending.
As if all that were not enough for the incoming White House team, what of the man who is still consistently linked to being Sir Keir Starmer’s man in Washington?
Costly legal dispute
No10 could have poured cold water on Peter Mandelson if his name was not really in the frame.
Charming no doubt, wily, canny and experienced — but is the Prince Of Darkness really the right fit?
His time as EU Trade Commissioner would suggest otherwise.
His entire tenure had attacking tariffs and protectionism as its mantra — the very bread and butter of Donald Trump’s America First agenda.
And he did not shy away from winding up the Americans in that job.
In 2005 he vowed to launch “the biggest, most difficult and costly legal dispute in the World Trade Organisation’s history” against Washington.
And he fell out badly with his US counterpart when he accused the US Deputy Secretary of State of taking orders from Boeing, leading to one of the more colourful transatlantic wars of words.
Given the delicate mess our newbie PM’s forays into foreign policy so far have left him in, would it not be wise to choose someone a tad more diplomatic to manage the day-to-day running of Britain’s most important international relationship?
WHAT was one of Rachel Reeves’s last acts as an opposition MP before becoming Chancellor?
Sticking a subscription to The Economist on her expenses.
According to Commons data published recently, the Chancellor-to-be claimed £94 on June 1 for the highbrow mag, the day after Parliament was dissolved for the General Election.
Given Reeves is now battling claims she sexed up her CV about her career as an economist before she entered No11, I hope she is getting value for money from the taxpayer and reading every word.
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