The American people have rejected their own democracy, embracing a man who previously sought to annul their votes. They have formalised post-truth, determining that mendacity is no bar to public office. They have rejected rational action on climate for a voice that gushes about boundless oil. They have turned back society’s clock, absolving a cheerful confessor to sexual assaults. They have dismissed international cooperation for prosperity, backing a zero-sum mercantilist who describes “tariff” as the “most beautiful word” in the English language. Ruinous consequences will abound everywhere, not least in Ukraine and the bleeding communities of Gaza.
Under these global shadows, the implications for the UK may seem parochial. But the business of government has to continue, and it is that close-to-home worry that will have made last night a sleepless one in Downing Street. The reality of Donald Trump’s return confronts Keir Starmer with two traps, but also with one opportunity.
First we have the “cringe trap” that comes with having to kow-tow to the great bully-in-chief on the world stage. Recall the squirm-inducing images of Donald Trump taking Theresa May’s hand on camera, a hand the then-prime minister looked powerless to retrieve. For Starmer, even more spectacular kow-towing will be required because Trump is starting out loathing this “far left” Labour government, and has recently filed a complaint charging party volunteers supporting the Harris campaign with “foreign interference.”
The temptation to scrape and bow will be especially strong, not only because America matters, but because such gestures are proven to work with this “l'état c'est moi” statesman. Remember, one attraction of JD Vance as a running mate for Trump was precisely the submissive self-humiliation he embodied. Just a few years before becoming a politician, Vance had compared Trump to pain-relieving narcotics, and mused about whether he could be America’s Hitler. When ambition made him willing to eat his own words and vow unconditional loyalty to Trump, the great ego was thrilled.
Trump might offer Starmer something real—an opening in trade talks, for example—if the prime minister made a display of similarly humiliating deference. What might that involve? Well, an obvious back-channel demand could be dismissing the foreign secretary, David Lammy. He’s been hectically trying to build bridges, but—short of volunteering for a Vance-like personality transplant—it’s tough for Lammy to shrug off having once called the President-elect a “racist Ku Klux Klan and Nazi sympathiser,” and vowed to “chain” himself to No 10’s door to disrupt a state visit. (While mostly ignorant of the world beyond American shores, Trump’s keen ears for personal slights know no borders).
Such reshuffling might well “work” in immediate diplomatic terms, but it is nonetheless a trap, especially for a Labour prime minister. Trump will be the great hate figure within the governing party for the next four years, to the point where appearing to suck up to him could fatally undermine Starmer’s standing on his own side. And indeed, more widely in apolitical Britain—Hugh Grant’s plucky defiance of an overbearing US president in “Love, Actually” gets close to Middle England’s heart.
The second trap for Starmer is to double down on a reactionary reading of what’s possible in politics. The US result might be read as confirming the irredeemable chauvinism of public opinion. That is always the inclination of Labour’s now-dominant “machine right” tendency, personified by Starmer’s own chief-of-staff Morgan McSweeney, and it isn’t always wrong. Having paved the way to a great Commons majority by wrapping Labour in the Union flag, it may now take Trump 2.0 to mean that the only way to hold on to power is to put out more flags, perhaps while chucking in a few wilfully clumsy, folksy and ear-catching interventions on trans rights and penises.
But this, too, could be a trap. First and most obviously, Britain isn’t America. Secondly, while Labour’s safety-first pre-election positioning worked wonders for gaming our electoral system, it relied on a strikingly narrow basis of support, and is now seriously exposed on the left as well as the Conservative front. The Greens and the SNP are real vulnerabilities. Now the Liberal Democrats, unencumbered by office, could become a third: Ed Davey immediately moved to exploit the Trump disaster in the way Starmer can’t, decrying a “dangerous” and “destructive” leader and calling for Britain to get closer to Europe.
More fundamentally, self-styled progressives need to stop and ask themselves whether Trump’s victory really demonstrates the irresistible lure of his authoritarian posturing, or whether instead their own failings had a role. After decades of meritocratic bilge, the Democrats this time tried to make play with “joy” which, in a society scarred and sickened by stubborn and deepening inequalities, proved equally wide of the mark. The best way to beat the right is instead to develop and explain gritty and practical answers to the grinding problems of day-to-day life. Franklin Roosevelt would have left Trump on the floor.
Which brings us to the one opportunity that Trump's return offers to our prime minister—the chance to stand for something. Having plummeted with astonishing speed in the glum and story-less months since the July election, Starmer’s personal ratings have finally bounced back after a Budget which followed the great Rooseveltian dictum: “Do something.” Putting up taxes for the NHS makes enemies as well as friends, but it at least proved that the government had a purpose. Now a newly frightening international stage will force many more decisions in which the administration in London will have to reveal its true nature.
From Paris, Emmanuel Macron hinted at fateful forks in the road, bolting on to his congratulation to Trump the news that he had already discussed the result with German chancellor Olaf Scholz. He talked about European integration and referred to “defending our interests and our values”, not as a mere aspect of working with Washington, but as something additional to and distinct from it. It’s a very delicate dance, but one that Starmer must learn. If you can’t define yourself on Planet Trump, you’ll soon be defined—and sunk—by your submission.
