Buy Starmer, hold Badenoch, sell Farage

AMONG THE MANY THINGS that Donald Trump enjoys—adulation, moneymaking, golf and gold décor—the thing that he values most is his repu­tation as disruptor-in-chief. This has served him as well as any business acumen he may or may not possess, because it leaves his enemies off balance as much as anything he ever actually does.

Here in Blighty, as the weather finally warms up, Trump’s ability to disrupt is flowering as surely as the daffodils. In six short weeks since his return, he has sowed confusion and discord by giving our frontline politicians some awkward questions to chew over. Such as, is he going to abandon the defence of Europe that has been a cornerstone of US foreign policy since 1945, does he see any value in continuing American membership of NATO, and has he actively embraced Vladimir Putin’s Russia? Most commentators here are not convinced that what Trump has done over Ukraine would have been any different had he been a covert Russian asset.

Before Trump, support for Ukraine was a non-partisan issue in our domestic politics. Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak for the Conservatives, then Sir Keir Starmer for Labour, all promised to stand by the Ukrainians for as long as it took and to provide whatever they needed to fight off the Russian invasion of February 2022. This political consensus did not, however, come without its problems. Finding the money was one, deciding what a Ukrainian win would look like was another, and trying to work out how a pro-Ukrainian policy dovetailed with British relations with the European Union (EU) was yet another.

But these issues paled into insignificance once it became clear that the return of Donald Trump to the White House would mean an instant and drastic rethink of all aspects of Anglo- and Euro-American relations, including support for Ukraine.

The Starmer government, barely seven months in office, hoped to keep the Trump administration in roughly the same place as the previous Biden administration had been, providing materiel, intelligence and funding. This produced an early trip to Wash­ington that many considered to be the most cringeworthy public spectacle in the history of the modern premiership, as Sir Keir shamelessly flattered Trump in the Oval Office, then produced a letter from the king inviting the Donald to an ‘unprece­dented’ second state visit. The president seemed pleased, checked that the letter was signed, picked out the word Windsor, and described King Charles as a “great, great gentleman”. But as for keeping him sweet on Ukraine, a country about which both he and his cabinet had been volubly negative—spoiler alert: it didn’t work.

Some of Starmer’s regrettable toadying can also be traced to Labour’s time in opposi­tion during Trump’s first term, when several of its prominent members made exten­sive public criticisms of the president. Rather embarrassingly, one of those most guilty of undiplomatic language, David Lammy, is currently serving as our foreign secretary, and Starmer’s charm offensive was doubtless intended to divert any possible anger against Lammy, who was kept conspicuously invisible during the Washington junket.

The Lammy problem, though, was really only the Labour Party’s problem writ small. Donald Trump is not popular with the British public—only about a third of the nation likes him—but realpolitik, and a possible trade deal, required that a way had to be found to work with him. Big smiles, kind words and a cup of tea with the king seemed like the cheapest and most effective ways for Starmer to woo Trump, at the same time as holding him at a distance that would not unduly distress Labour voters, and would not be seen as selling out Britain’s interests.

Two other party leaders have also had problems in navigating a world in which Donald Trump suddenly looms so large again.

The leader of the Conservative opposition is Kemi Badenoch, who has been in her job for an even shorter time than Starmer has in his. She was elected party leader last November, and immediately declared that there would be no Tory announcements on policy for up to two years. This reflected her own preference for wonkish think-tank theorising, but was also a cautious response to her party’s catastrophic performance in the last general election, when it returned only 120 members to the House of Commons—a record low. In a situation like that, with numbers like those, political wisdom dictates that a period of silence and reflection is the best way to hold your party together, and to avoid testing the patience of a public who had clearly expressed their unwillingness to believe anything the party said.

Sadly for her, Trump’s apparent abandonment of Ukraine has made it hard to maintain her strategic silence. She would, of course, be a natural political ally and supporter of a Republican administration in the US, and as recently as January, she was happy to go in print

to announce that she was sure that Donald Trump would be “a force for good in the world”. That comment hasn’t aged too well. It swiftly became a minority view after the savage dressing down that Trump and Vice President JD Vance dished out to President Volodymyr Zelensky only a day after Starmer’s visit. British pub­lic reaction to that meeting was overwhelmingly negative, and has made public support for Trump politically toxic.

Badenoch has tiptoed around the Trump problem since then, content to support the prime minister, who has not directly condemned Trump and Vance, and will not. Instead, he has concentrated on frenzied activity all across Europe, securing new agreements on diplomatic, military and financial support for Kyiv. The situation changes every day, and senior politicians have renounced making definitive statements about anything Trumpish until further notice. This is not an issue that any of them can hope to exploit with any prospect of party advantage.

The conservative wing of British opinion has largely turned against Trump, at least for now, largely driven by the realisation that his alleged preference for ‘transactional’ politics extends to dumping any and all of America’s existing friendships, alliances and commitments, including the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the UK. A good few of the Tory ‘wets’, who have sensibly rebranded themselves the One Nation Group, were never too fond of Trump, and almost all except the hard­est of hard-right Conservatives revised their view of him after the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Remarkably, Andrew Neil, the doyen of rightwing commentators, has recently denounced him as “an unprincipled, narcissistic char­latan who doesn’t give a damn about democracy”.

But Trump has always had one secure friend in British politics, Nigel Farage, leader of the populist Reform UK party, which has been matching the two main parties, and sometimes even leading them, in national opinion polls for the last few months. Unfor­tunately for Farage, however, the barney in the Oval Office left him isolated, not only among frontline British political leaders but also within his own party.

Reform UK takes its main political character from its fierce opposition to immigration, and this, along with its other policy highlights—hatred of ‘woke’, protection of free speech, determination to shrink the state, and bitter resentment of elitist institutions such as the civil service, the judiciary, the House of Lords and the BBC—places the party in an ideal position to align with Trump and his MAGA friends across the Atlantic.

Farage was exultant when Trump was returned for a second term as president, and has since spent a great deal of time in America glad-handing senior Trumpists at any ballyhoo or shindig where they could be found. His great hope was that British vot­ers would join the worldwide swing to the right that Trump appeared to be spearheading, and that any successes the president achieved would, by associa­tion, add to the lustre of Reform’s insurgent creden­tials. The equation does not look quite so simple now.

President Zelensky is widely regarded by Brits as a hero. He possesses a great many qualities that we admire, and for which we are prepared to excuse him for being a foreigner. He is brave, unassuming, a bit scruffy and not too handsome. Of all the quali­ties we dislike in foreigners, suaveness and good looks probably come top. We also don’t like Vladimir Putin, and our enemy’s enemy gets a natural free pass into our good books. These kinds of old-time prejudices play well with a lot of the people who instinc­tively support Reform, and herein lies Farage’s problem.

Over the years he has expressed open admiration for Putin as “a political operator”. In the days before Brexit he also rel­ished blaming the EU for all sorts of things, including “poking the Russian bear” and thus bringing foreseeable retribution down on the Ukrainians. Not our fight, said Nigel. But the trian­gulations involved are now rather complicated.

Though many of Farage’s long-time supporters are keen on Putin’s traditional, pro-family positions, and a few on the far right openly wish that our country was run rather more in the way that Putin runs Russia, in recent polling, only about 10 per cent of current Reform supporters, that is, about 2.5 per cent of the UK population, support Putin on Ukraine. In other words, both Farage and his most fanatical followers are out of step with the British people. That’s not good for a populist party.

Zelensky’s approval rating jumped by 10 per cent after the Oval Office debacle, and is currently running in the high sixties. Reform sits at around 25 per cent in national polling, with Farage personally at roughly the same level, although his disapproval rating brings his net popularity down to minus (-)39. There no longer seems to be any obvious boost for Reform in anything to do with Ukraine or Trump.

Indeed, the connection with Trump has probably done more harm to the party than anyone expected. Elon Musk comes as part of the Trump package, and has spent the last six months engaged in a sustained social media campaign in support of far-right parties all over Europe, including Reform UK. Farage took this as a seal of approval from Trump, but matters turned sour in January, when Musk suddenly declared that Farage was not up to the job of leading Reform and that the party needed a new leader. He even went so far as to name one of Reform’s five MPs, Rupert Lowe, as a better candidate. The whole thing was laughed off by the party, but the consequences have rumbled on.

Last week, Lowe went into print with critical remarks about Farage, complaining that Reform was no more than “a party of protest”, that it needed more substance on policy, and that Farage personally had a Messiah complex. Was this a bid for the leadership? If so, it was premature, with over four years till the next election, and also ill-judged, because Farage is about as thin-skinned as Trump, and comes with a long track record as a master of savage infighting within the fringe parties he has fronted. Vengeance soon followed, with accusations by the party leadership against Lowe, of bullying and the use of inap­propriate language in his private offices. The police have been informed, and Lowe has had the party whip withdrawn.

In a further twist, a senior lawyer commissioned by the party to investigate the accusations against Lowe has now publicly contradicted his account of her conversations with him, after he claimed that she had told him that she had found no evidence to support the charges. The row goes on, and party membership is dropping.

Farage and Reform UK enjoyed a kind of golden era between Trump’s election and his inauguration, when everything seemed possible and reality had not intruded in the very com­plicated ways it has done since.

An investment report on British politics might now read: buy Starmer, hold Badenoch, sell Farage. Trump is, indeed, the master disruptor, of friend and foe alike.

diplomacyDonald TrumpgeopoliticsNigel FarageSir Keir Starmertrade and tariffUS-UK RelationsVladimir PutinVolodymyr Zelensky