The British have a good reputation for diplomacynow it is time to put it to work at full speed to manage the “special relationship” with the United States in geopolitically fragile times. The progressive government of Keir Starmer has to deal with a man whom many of his ministers have criticized harshly during his time in opposition for very good reasons.
The dilemma in the United Kingdom was made clear the morning after Trump’s victory in an interview with Labour’s chairwoman of the British parliamentary foreign affairs committee, Emily Thornberry.. “You described Trump as a racist sexual predator (during a visit to the UK during his first term as president).” a BBC journalist told him.. “Yes and he is,” Cooper replied, adding, “but he is the president of the United States and we have to work with him.”
Thornberry is not the only Labor member to have criticized the winner of the U.S. election. Health minister Wes Streeting has described him as. “an odious, pathetic, small man.”.
In fact, unlike their predecessors Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan during his first term, Trump did not receive the honor of an invitation to speak in the British Parliament. when he visited the UK in 2008 and 2009, largely because of rejection petitions signed by 200 MPs, including half of the current Starmer cabinet, according to the conservative newspaper The Telegraph.
“Trump is not only a misogynistic, sociopathic neo-Nazi sympathizer, he is a a profound threat to the international order which has been the foundation for Western progress for so long,” wrote one such signatory in 2018, the current foreign minister, David Lammy.. Now his outspokenness about Trump coupled with his friendship with Barack Obama has even caused some to question whether Starmer will have to remove him from his post before Trump’s arrival in January. But would be “a struggle to find a politician” who hasn’t said “rude things” about Trump., as Lammy rightly noted to the BBCdescribing his earlier comments as “old news.”
On the one hand, it is expected that closer relations with the European UnionOn the other hand, it is time to work with an old transatlantic partner that is not very predictable. Starmer and Lammy were among the first politicians to congratulate Trump on his victory. In September they had already dined together with the Republican leader at Trump Tower. The replacement of the British ambassador was put on hold at Washington before the election, opening the door to a political appointment, rather than a civil servant.
The favorite is Peter Mandelsonone of the political geniuses of Tony Blair’s government’s New Labour project. As Labour’s director of communications and later trade minister, he also became to be the most hated man in his party. He would have to face the challenges presented by Trump: tariffs and a possible end to support for Ukrainethe NATO and to the goals of combating climate change.
It would make sense. If Trump is the “master of the evolving media.”According to a former president of CBC News, the most natural thing to do would be to send the first British spin doctor, who earned the nickname “prince of darkness,” to his home turf.