It was perhaps naive of No 10 ever to position Keir Starmer as a “Donald Trump whisperer” capable of persuading the unpredictable US president to step back from reckless decisions.
The “special relationship” has been under severe strain in recent months over the UK’s decision to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands and the refusal of European countries to back Trump’s play for Greenland.
When it came to bombing Iran and assassinating its leader, Starmer appears to have had little influence on Trump, who went ahead regardless of the UK’s refusal to let the US use its military bases.
The prime minister now finds himself in the diplomatically precarious position of declining to endorse the strikes – which have won support from Canada and Australia – but also refusing to condemn them as many in his party would like to see him do.
At the moment, the UK’s fence-sitting stance is that it played no part in the missile strikes, but that it will not mourn the ayatollah whose regime has “menaced” western countries.
The ambivalent position seems increasingly difficult to hold. The defence secretary, John Healey, struggled to express a moral or legal opinion on Trump’s military action when repeatedly pressed on the issue on Sunday.
It seems the UK still calculates that criticising the US president is a difficult move, even when it is clear that Starmer was not onboard with his actions, which the attorney general has warned are in breach of international law.
Getting close to Trump has been the prime minister’s strategy from the start. Starmer’s team were ecstatic when they succeeded in setting up a two-hour first meeting with him in New York just 18 months ago. One aide fist-pumped as the the then Republican presidential candidate said positive things about Starmer being “very nice” and “popular”.
From the honour of a state visit for Trump, to refusal to criticise the illegal capture of Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro, Starmer has made clear that even when he disagrees with the White House, he will not risk infuriating Trump publicly.
The closest he has come to opposing the president has been in defending the British troops who lost their lives in Afghanistan, after the president said Nato troops had stayed “a little off the frontlines”. But time and again, before and since, he has shied away from outright criticism.
The question now for Starmer is whether it would be in the national and international interest for the UK government to change course, move closer to Europe and start standing up to the US president more robustly – as some in his party and on the progressive left of politics have long wanted him to do.
There could also come a point when it is in his own narrow political interest to start distancing himself from Trump, with the Green party’s Zack Polanski calling the strikes on Iran illegal and the Lib Dems calling on the prime minister to stand up to Trump’s bullying tactics. In the Gorton and Denton byelection, where Labour lost a huge majority, anger over Starmer’s slowness to criticise Israel on Gaza contributed to the drop in support.
Starmer said in 2024 that the “special relationship” with the US “sits above whoever holds the particular office”. But it could be time for him to make a special exception for Trump.
