He called him “Donald”. No one calls him “Donald” – maybe not even Melania or his kids. “The Donald”, yes. Though about him, not to him; face to face, it’s “Mr President” or “Sir”.
But that’s what Keir Starmer did – the “woke”, progressive, left-wing human rights lawyer, the kind of chap that Maga loves to hate. The same guy that JD Vance tried, but failed, to bait about free speech when he was last in the Oval Office (Trump notably did not rise to the invitation to join in and publicly maul the British prime minister).
Apparently, Keir is on such good terms with the US president, he calls him by his first name only – like it’s the most natural thing in the world – and Donald doesn’t seem to mind a bit.
I’m sure I saw it happen at the G7, when the pair announced to great surprise that Trump had signed (most of) the “US-UK economic prosperity deal” (EPD). It was like they’d said they were getting engaged. Trump dropped the papers out of the folder at the reveal, but before he had even started to lean down – and who could be sure he’d make it and then get up again? – Starmer had helpfully hit the tarmac and was retrieving the precious pages. “Very important document,” he said.
Is it? Well, the “optics” make it so. I wondered what Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson – not to mention former UK international trade minister Kemi Badenoch – would think of this outbreak of transatlantic bonhomie; and of Starmer’s success, albeit modestly on paper, in finalising a trade deal with the most dynamic economy on Earth after they had failed to do so.
The EPD is certainly not as good as it might be. It’s not the kind of comprehensive free trade deal that was touted by the Brexiteers a decade ago. They’ve dropped the clauses on steel, seemingly because of residual American worries about the nominal Chinese ownership of the near-nationalised British Steel. There are also ominous clauses about pharmaceuticals and (the implied) renegotiation of the prices paid by the NHS.
There are the usual vague hopes about hi-tech stuff, but there’s nothing about financial services (down to the individual states mostly), while the car industry is still subject to a 100,000 quota before punitive tariffs kick in.
However, the glass is definitely half full, in the sense that the EPD has potential – and it is one more Trump tariff deal than anyone else in the world has got. There’s no mistaking the fact that it’s a personal diplomatic achievement for Starmer and his diplo-political team.
In fact, the most significant words about trade weren’t contained in the EPD, but were uttered by Trump – sorry, Donald, now we're all pals – as he left the improvised press conference. The British would be looked after on trade “because I like them”, he declared.
In particular, he likes Keir. Even though the prime minister, in Trump’s words, is “slightly more liberal than I”.
Too right, Donald. This is a guy who despises everything the US president stands for, but, unlike David Lammy or Peter Mandelson (to take two prominent examples), Starmer was not one of the people stupid enough to slag him off in public and then have to recant it. It just wasn’t – and isn’t – Starmer’s style.
They say opposites attract, so maybe that’s why the boastful felon and the reserved British former public prosecutor get along so well. That and the fact that both men are so desperate to show that they can actually get stuff done that they felt a sudden and compelling impulse to sign off on the EPD.
To be fair, Starmer has enjoyed remarkable success in foreign affairs. However, it is an uncomfortable fact for Donald that the EPD, such as it is, is the only international deal on peace, trade, or indeed anything, that he’s managed to reach.
The great dealmaker has failed in the Middle East and Ukraine. In fact, he’s off early from the G7 summit to go and deal with the Israel-Iran conflict, possibly making contingency plans to bomb Tehran (although that’s denied).
Had Kamala Harris won last November, Trump would now be fulminating about how “this would never have happened if I’d been president” – the usual hypothetical nonsense. He hasn’t achieved peace anywhere, let alone on day one, and his tariffs policy is mostly a disgrace. But he can at least boast that he’s got one “big, beautiful trade deal” done. Starmer, too, can go home to tease Badenoch and Farage about this post-Brexit triumph.
No wonder Donald’s so nice about Keir, and Keir is so nice about Donald. That’s a nice deal.
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