Sir Keir Starmer’s great ploy has failed. Britain has not been exempted from the destructive tariffs unveiled yesterday by President Trump in the White House.
All of our Prime Minister’s grovelling and sucking up has come to nothing. As recently as last week, No 10 was suggesting that this country might obtain its own favoured deal. This evidently slipped Trump’s mind.
The most mortifying moment in Sir Keir’s fruitless courting of Trump came a few weeks ago when the PM handed over the King’s letter inviting the President to an ‘unprecedented’ second state visit.
Trump described King Charles as ‘a beautiful man, a wonderful man’. He declared that Britain was a ‘fantastic country’. Not so fantastic that it will be spared draconian tariffs that are certain to damage the West, including America, and give comfort to our enemies.
For me, and I’ve no doubt millions of my fellow countrymen, Starmer’s abject invitation was one of the more painful moments in our national decline. To see an obsequious British Prime Minister prostrate himself in front of the oafish and vulgar Trump was almost more than flesh could bear.
To quote Kipling: ‘All our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!’ But if our power and glory have ebbed away, assisted by generations of defeatist politicians, at least we retained some fragments of dignity.
Starmer threw those away. And for what? Trump has the state visit he covets – a visit that a more accomplished politician than our Prime Minister would have held out as a tempting prospect without a date attached – and has given zero in return.
The cosy dinners and telephone calls and bogus mutual compliments and Starmer’s insincerities about the preposterous American President – all have come to absolutely nothing.
When will the Government wake up to the reality that all that matters for Donald Trump is himself, writes Stephen Glover
When will the Government wake up to the reality that all that matters for Donald Trump is himself and what he deems (utterly misguidedly, as it happens) to be in the best interests of the United States of America?
He is a crude bully – witness the punishment beating that he and his weird deputy JD Vance delivered to President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House five weeks ago.
Trump has outrageously threatened the sovereign nation of Canada by suggesting that it should become the 51st state. He says that America must ‘control’ Greenland. He wants to get his hands on Ukraine’s minerals. He abuses Zelensky one moment, flatters him the next, and then abuses him again.
I don’t know whether he is truly mad or is simply adept at seeming so. It probably doesn’t matter. What the Government needs to grasp is that his alleged soft spot for Britain – often emphasised by Nigel Farage, leader of Reform – either doesn’t exist or, if it does, vanishes as soon as the President lives up to his own rhetoric and puts America first.
His British mother, his Scottish golf courses and his professed love for the Royal Family and our late Queen (who reportedly couldn’t bear him) are in the end of no benefit to this country.
Here is a suggestion for Sir Keir Starmer. Bending the knee demonstrably hasn’t worked. So why not try a new approach? Instead of being an ineffectual supplicant, why not stand up to Donald Trump – politely, firmly and determinedly?
Bullies thrive on patronising those who are prepared to kowtow. What they don’t like are people who stand up for themselves and won’t be pushed around. That doubtless largely explains why Trump respects, even fears, Vladimir Putin.
I don’t suggest that Sir Keir can easily imitate the Russian tyrant. But he can put away the begging bowl and stop demeaning himself and his country. We are not – not yet, at any rate – a pathetic banana republic wholly dependent on the United States.
Possibly a special arrangement with Trump is achievable but it shouldn’t be one in which Britain makes all the concessions in return for the President agreeing to spare us from the most swingeing tariffs. That would be very far from the kind of balanced trade deal envisaged by British policy makers since Brexit.
All of our Prime Minister’s grovelling and sucking up has come to nothing, Glover argues. As recently as last week, No 10 was suggesting that this country might obtain its own favoured deal
The Government is reportedly offering to reduce existing tariffs that Britain imposes on American exports of chicken, beef and other meats. Such a move would be unpopular with British farmers, who already rightly feel that Labour has it in for them.
Britain is also said to be contemplating easing or scrapping the digital services tax on American tech giants that generate more than £25 million in revenue from UK users. It is expected to bring in about £800 million this year.
Companies such as Google, Apple and Amazon pay the tax, levied at 2 per cent of revenue. That’s hardly onerous. US digital behemoths have of course been famously proficient at minimising their liability to UK corporation tax.
White House officials appear to be proposing something like this: We may spare you the harshest of our tariffs if you open your markets to cheap American food, and go easy on US tech multinationals.
This sounds like coercion – and there are likely to be further American demands such as abolishing VAT (which Trump regards as a tariff) applied to imported US goods. These are not equitable proposals.
The Prime Minister is right to resist the kind of retaliatory tariffs being prepared by the European Union until it is clear whether there is a reasonable deal available to Britain. One that amounted to caving into Trump’s extortion would obviously be unacceptable.
There is another consideration. Trump’s so-called ‘Liberation Day’ is very likely to backfire. The cost of imported goods will rise in the United States. Many American manufacturers will struggle to source components that don’t attract tariffs.
One way or another, there will almost certainly be a high degree of economic chaos in America itself, which many voters will justly blame on Donald Trump. He will then probably climb down because, despite being half-bonkers and maddeningly full of himself, he is also a pragmatist.
So Sir Keir Starmer need not and should not continue to treat the American President as though he is some sort of invulnerable Sun King who can do whatever he pleases without consequences. He is a very flawed politician who is about to antagonise many of his supporters and give encouragement to his foes.
What a glorious relief it would be if the Prime Minister had the courage to say what I’m sure he believes – that tariffs are a disastrous policy which, unless checked, will divide and impoverish the West.
And while I would advise against cancelling Trump’s state visit for fear of enraging the vengeful monster in his lair, the PM would win the admiration of a grateful nation if he implied that the President’s jamboree was being put on hold. Why honour a man who intends to harm this country and its allies?
The time has come to stop indulging the Donald – and for Sir Keir Starmer to start behaving as the confident leader of a proud country rather than an acolyte at the imperial court.
Being supine hasn’t got him anywhere with Trump. Standing up for Britain will.
