‘A neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’: how Labour will eat its words on Trump

Shadow cabinet members’ outbursts about the ex-president may come back to bite them, says Camilla Tominey

David Lammy, the man hoping to be the next foreign secretary, once described Donald Trump as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazisympathising sociopath” and “profound threat to the international order”. Sir Keir Starmer has wisely been more measured than his shadow cabinet colleague but Labour’s negative stance on the former US president is hardly the best prelude to cordial relations across the Pond should both be propelled to power this year.

Lammy’s outburst came as another Labour comrade, the London mayor Sadiq Khan, gave permission for anti-Trump activists to fly a protest blimp of the so-called leader of the free world as a crying baby in a nappy over the capital in 2018.

That followed a transatlantic war of words, with Khan expressing a desire for Trump to lose the 2016 election “badly” and, a year later, Trump suggesting Khan had been complacent about the Borough Market and London Bridge terror attacks.

Yet while there is clearly no love lost between the man hoping for a second term in the White House and his nemesis hoping for a third term in City Hall, how might Starmer negotiate the “special relationship” with Trump 2.0?

He has already admitted that a second Trump victory would not be his “desired outcome”, and that there was a “great deal of concern” Trump may change the US position on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

According to one shadow minister who knows Starmer well: “He wouldn’t get on with Trump – he would find him completely obnoxious,” which possibly isn’t the best start. Describing the prime ministerial hopeful as “a feminist” with a “strong wife” in Lady Victoria, to whom he has been married for nearly 17 years, the close ally added: “Just his misogynistic ways will be enough for Keir to loathe him. He’s got a strong wife and a strong daughter. Of course he would deal with him if he has to deal with him – but he would do it through gritted teeth.”

Starmer has been characteristically lawyerly when asked how he would handle a Trumpenaissance. In a “grown-up world,” he once insisted, “you have to make that relationship work. That doesn’t mean that… we would agree on everything, but we have to make it work.”

On another occasion, he said, with typical diplomacy: “It’s up to the people of the United States who they elect as president. When it comes to working with our allies, it’s so much bigger than personalities. It is about protecting our interests and ensuring the world is a more secure and prosperous place. The special relationship with the US is vital. I’ll work with whoever is president.”

Yet as his biographer Tom Baldwin points out: “None of that should be taken to mean that Starmer intends to resile from repeated statements from himself and Lammy that they would seek to pursue progressive liberal values and to strengthen human rights around the world if Labour forms a government.

“Not only is this in line with views the Labour leader has held all his adult life, he also believes greater accountability to end what the former foreign secretary David Miliband – someone he speaks to regularly – has called the ‘age of impunity’ is a way of extending Britain’s influence and soft power.

“When he went to Kyiv to see Volodymyr Zelensky in February 2023 to reaffirm Labour’s support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, much of their conversation is understood to have consisted of the country’s president asking his guest – who he had learnt was a distinguished human rights lawyer – about the prospect of prosecuting the Kremlin’s war crimes.

“And, far from offering Benjamin Netanyahu unconditional backing in his war on Gaza, Starmer has publicly backed the Israeli prime minister’s political opponents and warned any breaches of international law will mean ‘there are going to be consequences for him when this is over’.”

The dilemma facing Starmer was plain to see at last month’s Munich Security Conference, where he met with several world leaders, including Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State. Although he described the relationship between the US and the UK as “so valuable, for mutual economic and national security”, he could not resist a thinly veiled dig at Trump by pledging to “rebuild, renew and resource” the Nato alliance rather than “divide and threaten”.

It came after the former US president’s warning that he would “not protect” countries that failed to “pay [their] bills”. Starmer later told the BBC: “Now, obviously, as you would expect, if we’re elected into government, we will deal with whoever the American people choose to be their president. But of course we redouble our commitment to Nato.” While the rebuke to Trump will have been welcomed by European leaders, it is unlikely to have gone down well with the Republicans Starmer may soon have to work with.

While Anglo-American opposites can attract – just look at Blair and Bush or Cameron and Obama, the truth is that neither the Conservative Party nor Labour has done enough in recent years to forge close enough contacts with Trump or the people around him.

As Nile Gardiner of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation points out: “Starmer is almost completely unknown in Washington and conservatives who do closely follow British political developments have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Labour leader. A TrumpStarmer relationship would be extremely tense and difficult.”

Could a well-chosen UK ambassador to the US provide the answer? Reports that Rishi Sunak is set to appoint a replacement for outgoing Karen Pierce as soon as this summer are likely to rattle Starmer, who will no doubt prefer his own pick in such a strategically important role. Current runners and riders are thought to include David Cameron’s former chief of staff Ed Llewellyn, currently Britain’s ambassador to Italy, as well as Philip Barton, the Foreign Office permanent secretary, and his Home Office counterpart, Matthew Rycroft.

Former defence secretary Sir Liam Fox has also expressed an interest, while even Nigel Farage has put his hat in the ring, arguing his close relationship with Trump would be “ideal” for the role if both Labour and the Republicans win power this year.

But with Blairites, including the former prime minister himself, and Lord Mandelson advising Starmer behind the scenes – it’s likely a number of the New Labour old guard will want to be rewarded for their loyalty.

Could ambassador Blair hold the secret to improving Labour’s relationship with Trump? Stranger things have certainly happened.

‘Starmer would find Trump obnoxious... he’d deal with him through gritted teeth’