Starmer and Trump's relationship at an all time low

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1:01to empower our future. The new statesman. Is this the end of the special relationship? Angry about the lack of support for his war in Iran. Donald Trump stated that he didn't need any help from the UK despite using British air bases for strikes. In an angry social media rant, he also called Keir Starmer a loser and no Winston Churchill. Just a day later, the two leaders had a call to discuss military cooperation. Can relations be repaired? And is Westminster telling us the whole story? You're listening to daily politics from the new statesman and I'm joined by our US correspondent, Freddie Hayward. Hi, Freddie. Learn how you're doing. Yeah, all right, thanks. How are you? Good, good. Now, you've been busy over the past few days talking to a lot of people in the administration over there, UK officials as well, and you had a chat with Nigel Farage who was over in the states.

2:01And you've written a really enlightening piece about this. To what extent is the UK supporting or not supporting the US strikes? Because I think we're hearing different things from both sides of the pod. Well, the government is making a distinction between the offensive and the defensive strikes, which feels slightly immaterial once the war has actually kicked off. That was key in the decision about whether they would let the Americans use the British bases for the initial wave of attacks. But now, essentially, what they're doing is what you'd expect in a normal sort of situation, normal amount of cooperation between the British and American militaries, the American airplanes have landed in bases around the world, British bases around the world. They're using, they're cooperating on targeting for missile strikes, they're sharing intelligence, the MOD, and the Department of War are working closely together. So that sort of mechanical way in which our militaries have always worked together is happening.

3:04It's just that we have this very important breakdown of relations between the two principles, Keir Starmer and Donald Trump. And I think this has been a long time coming in some regard, in part just because Keir Starmer, I think Keir Starmer's policy or approach towards America has always been slightly misguided, and it's not really understood what the MAGA movement is about and what the administration means to do. He thought, remember that famous White House visit last February where he could sort of come and flatter Trump, and that would sort of enable him to be on Trump's good side and avoid some of the more complicated ways in which Trump can treat his allies. That was always a mistake, I thought, because of the way in which MAGA views the UK as this sort of decrepit declining immigration overrun sort of place, as we've spoken about before. So that's really important to the way in which the way in which MAGA now sees the UK. And to think that that could just be pushed away

4:06or lied it or glossed over with some niceties about the special relationship or a carriage ride around Windsor was always a mistake. So this is coming to the fore now. The fundamental disagreements between Keir Starmer who is focused on the world where international law used to matter and Donald Trump who couldn't care less and in fact actually resent some of the constraints of international law and is working to break down international institutions like the UN and replace them with his own sort of pretend kin controlable institutions like the Board of Peace and the Shield of Nations. Yeah, that's really interesting because in your piece you say that Starmer has actually begun to change that narrative about his approach to the Trump White House from like you described the kind of pomp and flattery to pitching himself to his MPs as the sort of anti-Trump Tribune in Europe.

5:06But that's not necessarily the whole story, is it? Well, not really, no, because we have this multiple multifaceted approach to the special relationship. We have communications that are constantly ongoing between diplomats in London and Washington in the embassy here from the foreign office. They will have people in number 10 like the Deputy National Security Advisors, Jonathan Powell, the National Security Adviser, the Foreign Secretary as their own relationship with Marco Rubio, et cetera, et cetera. So there's multiple layers on which this relationship is being communicated and works, particularly in the past week or so. I think it's slightly disingenuous for Kay Starmer to make out that he's always been opposed to the strikes. I mean, as was reported last week elsewhere, but also I've got some more details on why I think that's probably slightly disingenuous essentially in part because a meeting that occurred in the embassy a couple of weeks before the war started. I won't spoil that.

6:08For our listeners until the piece is out, but it completely undermines Kay's argument. And I don't think this should be a surprise to anyone because he's just spent a year doing the complete opposite. And I don't, not to be the cynic, a nocious, I try not to be, but... I thought America has made you less cynical, Freddie. No, it's very much more pessimistic about the rise of the right, I could tell you that. Kay Starmer gets into a lot of trouble and he knows that one of the easiest ways in which he can assuage is MPs to keep them on side without more spending, without tax rises is a rhetorical tone change in the way in which he approaches Donald Trump. That was an easy thing for him to do. I think maybe, yeah, sure, he does seem to have this aversion to Trump, I'm sure he doesn't like Trump. But I think it's fair to say that the Prime Minister has always been quite keen on the transatlantic relationship.

7:08So this is a bit of a step change. And his Labour MPs, I'm not sure, how is the response going down? I've not followed it as closely. Well, I think there is definitely... I mean, the memory of Iraq haunts the Labour Party more than any other party in UK politics. And so there's certainly a strong feeling in the Labour movement, Labour MPs. The sort of median Labour MP would think back to Iraq as a disaster and one case now has to take a different stance to the stance that the UK had towards America back then. So I think that there's quite a lot of optimism about the position that started taking. But in your piece, it's interesting, because you, after this public fallout between the two principles, as you write about, there was sort of a mop-up operation. Wasn't there lots and lots of dialogue between the two sides? Can you describe a bit of what you were hearing about that? Right, yeah, so on the 3rd of March, and the 9th of the 3rd of March, the new ambassador, Christian Turner, who was this career-dip plight who was formerly in Pakistan

8:12and New York, he was on the phone to Susan Wiles, the very influential chief of staff in Trump's White House. The joint chief of staff spoke to each other, Pete Hegseth spoke to John Healey. And as I mentioned, Evett Cooper, the foreign secretary, also spoke to Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio, we should remember, it's been a slightly more... It is all relative, but a slightly more moderate voice and this war compared to someone like Pete Hegseth, who looks extremely giddy. In his press conferences about the sort of death and destruction that's being brought across the Middle East. So, yeah, and I was just going back to what you're saying, and I wanted to... The interesting thing about the international law point, is that Kirstner is not making a substantive point about departure from America. He's not saying we now need to materially stand up on our own two feet. We need to recognize that America is economically colonized the UK through private equity and other reasons. And on the military side, we've lacked the capacity to act on the world stage without American help.

9:12He's not saying any of that. What he's saying really is, if this was internationally, if this was allowed according to international law, then we would have been with the American straightaway, but it wasn't. So therefore, we just had to wait 36 hours or however long it was. That, of course, Donald Trump might not be abiding by international law to the same extent that George Bush did or another American president. But if he made the effort to do so, it sounds as if Kirstner would have said, well, that's fine. The status quo of the relationship should be upheld as long as we abide by international law. That's why it's not really... It's not really... It's not a policy. It's not... There's not anything that he's really saying about the world. He's really just off-handing his foreign policy as opposed to America to these very abstract and quite manipulable legal opinions. Yeah, it's classic, Starmer, isn't it? It's falling back on... I mean, we've written before about how he outsources his decision-making to the law or to officialdom

10:14or some kind of precedent that feels quite old-fashioned in the kind of arena that we're playing in now. And of course, you know, he was a human rights lawyer as well. So that's kind of seen as his load star in terms of his decision-making. So it's classic, Starmer. But I think some Labour MPs, in fact, probably your average Labour MP would have wished to see more of that Hugh Grant in love actually starts that, you know, you were laying out where he kind of draws a line between America and the way that it's behaving in the world and, you know, UK under Starmer. He hasn't, as you say, made an ideological argument. He's just outsourced his approach, his decision-making to international law, and that's very him. And there's political calculations here as well, which I think Labour MPs are just as concerned about, which is people are very concerned about the cost of living. I'm writing my column for this week's magazine on this. So I won't spoil that either, but I've just been speaking to a number of shoppers outside London's biggest Tesco at discount hour

11:16when they put all the yellow discount stickers on the products. So these people are very concerned about the price of shopping and they all mentioned the war in Iran to me and said that's going to lead to another spike in prices. We're really worried about it. And actually, Keir Starmer was out on the morning that we're recording doing a speech and he said, you know, he was warning about bills going up being a concern for consumers and for businesses. So Labour MPs are hearing from their constituents the concerns about that. So to look, you know, I mean, to put any distance between your government and what's going on in the Middle East is a political calculation as well as one based, according to him, in international law. Yeah, the correct political calculation, I think. Yes. Yes. Yes, extremely unpopular. Trump's obviously extremely unpopular. Whether people on the right are left, I mean, it's slightly different for reform voters, but conservative voters don't like him. Many reform voters don't like him. So it's a bit of a no brainer if you're just focusing on the hard politics of it. Yeah, absolutely. I think we need to take a quick break here, Freddie,

12:18but we'll be back after this. Are you noticing your car insurance rate creep up even without tickets or claims? You're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry handles the legwork by comparing quotes side by side from over 50 top insurers so you can confidently hit by no spam calls, no hidden fees. Jerry even tracks rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Don't settle for higher rates. Download the Jerry app or visit jerry.ai slash a cast today. I'm back. I'm a new shkeleon and I'm still here with Freddie Hayward down the line from the US. Freddie, in your piece, you write that British foreign policy now takes place on three planes. So that's the theater of Westminster, the machinations of the deep state and the global connections of the nationalist right. Can you explain what you mean by those three planes

13:19and where labor sits in terms of those three planes? Right, I think this is why we get this disjunction that we were talking about in the first half between what's happening underneath the water, say, and then what's happening above the surface, whether that's in PMQs or on trees, so social or in the White House. Is so essentially you have, Starmer trying to take account of these political considerations, I think, as we were discussing as well as his interest in international law, at the same time you have these diplomats, I call them the deep state, I think we should probably, we should get more use to using that term because it's not in itself conspiratorial, we can just quite clearly define it as the sort of the military establishment, the security services and the civil service and the foreign office. They're quite clear that the special relationship is essentially this heirloom that they have to hand down from generation to generation,

14:19something they have to protect from the meddling hands of politicians. They're very focused on the long term. They see the waves of politics washing above them and they're just focused on sort of staying their cause. And that's clear when you speak to them, there's sort of a pride in the way in which they can stay in touch with their counterparts on both sides, really. And then the third aspect of this, which I think is slightly more unprecedented, I spoke to Simon McDonald to use to run the foreign office and he agreed that this was one of the newest things, the newest dynamics of the special relationship or the so-called special relationship as we should call it. And that's the oppositional politicians from the UK, whether it's Liz Truss, whether it's Nigel Farage, I saw Pretty Patel at the British Embassy the other day, they are all independently lobbying the White House and the administration to pursue their own type

15:20of foreign policy. So the biggest example has been on the Chagos Islands in Diego Garcia, remember that Nigel Farage had a dinner with Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary in Davos, I think that was in February or January, whenever that was. And that was one of the reasons that the administration changed their tone on the Chagos Islands. The only reason that can really happen is because Trump has adopted this court-like politics whereby the personalities of those in front of him, the personalities of people that pick up the phone to him or send him a text or tweet out something flattering towards him, is what he focuses on about when he gives people access. So he's long known Nigel Farage as we've spoken about before, going all the way back to 2015, 2016. And that relationship allows for us to have influence within the administration, not just a Trump Trump. So erratic, he can speak to took a Carlson three times

16:22in the past month and then also to Lindsey Graham and he ends up invading around. But also further down, if you go through the sort of echelons of the administration, then that's where people like Nigel Farage and others can exert some influence. So it really complicates things for labour and for the government because they're contending with all these different aspects of foreign policy. And it's not going very well, I think. Well, it's really interesting. There's a detail in your piece about how Farage, who obviously, as you say, he has close links to Trump and others in Trump's court, has actually offered, he says, his help to Starmer to try and foster those links. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Right. So one of the main criticisms made of the sort of third way of foreign policy that the oppositional politicians is that they're not acting in the national interest. It's almost treacherous to go all the way to Mar-a-Lago

17:23against the wishes of your own government. And I asked Farage about this on Saturday, directly. And I said, you know, I said, what would, how would you feel if you were in number 10 and say President Gary Gavin Newsom's in the White House and the opposition party, the Greens, go and see him and sort of lobby against your policy. He said, well, I'll do that anyway. So he seemed pretty unconcerned about that, but the point stands. And he was saying that he thinks that he's doing nothing that isn't in the national interest. I suppose that's because he thinks that changing the deal on Chegos and the Diego Garcia will eventually help the national interest. And it's worth him sort of circumventing the government. But you're right. And he did say that he has spoken to Keir Starmer to his face and to Peter Madison when he was appointed to his face, too, that he would help in any way off the record,

18:24no one would know blah, blah, blah. That's what he says. So that's sort of his response or repost to the accusation that he isn't acting in the national interest is that he's tried to go through appropriate routes. Remember, this has been a bit of a theme in Farage's life. Remember, when he came back from that famous golden door meeting with Trump, he reached out to the Foreign Office. He said, and they didn't want to hear anything from him, even though he'd had this had a chat with or met Donald Trump before Theresa May had. And was this his argument as well? Because you spoke to him face to face, didn't you, when he was over about reform support for the war in Iran, which is potentially a risky position given how unpopular it is in the UK and the cost of living implications that it could bring as we've discussed earlier. But also, it runs counter to the position that he took on Iraq and on other similar Libya, I think, as well in the past. Right, I mean, he's for the past 20 years

19:28has also been your quite classic anti-war focus at home, Britain first, if you like, tied on foreign policy. And it's very interesting and slightly confusing, I think, that he is now so vociferously supportive of the American position. I remember asking him about this at a press conference last year when we had the sort of the American strikes on the nuclear bases in it, around and he said, well, the JCPOA, which was Obama's nuclear deal, was not in Britain's interests, I sort of pressed him on whether this was because of his relationship and friendship with Trump, which he denied, as he would. And then on Saturday, I sort of pressed him again, because I find it curious, because as you say a news, the reform argument is sort of right of itself. We don't want more refugees coming into Europe, we're sick of destabilizing the region, we're sick of spending so much money on wars in far-flung countries as the line would go.

20:30And actually, we need to spend more on the NHS, we need to spend more on helping small businesses, et cetera, et cetera. It's quite a, it's an obvious argument to make. It's an argument that Donald Trump actually has made great hay out of over the past two decades, yeah, two decades really, going way back to the Nazis. But he hasn't done that. So his argument, essentially, is that the regime, the Islamic regime in Tehran poses such a resonational security that we should support the Americans in their mission to denude the government of their nuclear weapons and also their ability to support proxies to destabilize the region elsewhere. Okay, fine, I think that's one argument. It's essentially a near-conservative argument, but whatever. There is an aspect, I think, about supporting the Americans. I think, you know, I've written about this before, the sort of allure that Donald Trump has over Nigel Farage's mind and American more broadly. I do think that's part of this too,

21:30but the thing about their position is that it politically exposes them. It's extremely dangerous. Farage admitted himself, you know, no idea what was going to happen in this war. He said it was reasonably optimistic, but he doesn't know. Trump, I don't think knows. Based on what Trump says, he had a group of, I had told us that he wanted to elevate and then suddenly they were killed by Israeli or American planes. So he doesn't seem to have much of a plan. So to come out so supportive, come out and be so supportive of a war where you don't know how it's going to end, when we sort of know that there's a big chance of sort of ethnic nationalist backlash between Sunni and she is both in Iraq and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. And then there's the big question about oil and how that impacts the cost of living. Remember, oil is something that goes into everything, not just into cars, it produces plastics and fertilizers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's a key ingredient in the entire economy

22:31to take all of that and then risk it on supporting the war is quite bold. Yeah, stay with us, Freddie. We need to take another break here, but we'll get back onto that eroding special relationship after the break. Remember, you can listen to the New Statesman podcast, add free by downloading the New Statesman app. It's available on iOS and Android. Links to it are in the show notes. We're excited to announce that we've launched a new podcast, The Exchange, where we speak to leading thinkers to discuss the most pressing issues of our time. Wherever you listen to your podcasts, subscribe to The Exchange Feed. In the latest episode, we speak to pussy riots, Masha Aliyahkina about her time on the run. Subscribe to The New Statesman today and get your first five weeks for only five pounds. Go to NewStatesman.com, forward slash five weeks. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to The New Statesman podcast. I'm still here with our US correspondent, Freddie Haywood.

23:31You write about how the role of the UK used to provide international legitimacy for the things that the US wanted to do and that that role is essentially redundant under this administration because they don't feel the need for that international legitimacy to cover their actions. Where does that leave the UK then as having any use to the US? There is a strange irony, isn't it, that the very moment that we have a president who has such disdain for the international law, we have a prime minister for who international law is, we're told the only thing he really cares about. And that's never a good situation to be and if you're someone that believes in a special relationship. I think where does it leave the UK? Well, at least the UK searching for a new role, searching for some new relevance. I mean, the thing about being America's ally, whether it was in Iraq or Afghanistan or elsewhere, was that it enabled British prime ministers

24:34to I think come to terms with the decline of British power because it helped them think that we're projecting beyond the small islands that make up the UK. And now everyone just seems extremely bamboozled by the unveiling of Britain's material weakness. That's also been a key aspect here and I think it also feeds the embarrassment almost administration officials feel on behalf of Britain. They look at the inability to send ships and they cringe and they almost feel, as embarrassed as they think we should feel. So I think that's another aspect because if you can't rely on being the sort of diplomatic or branding peer with the United States, then you have to exert power in other ways

25:36and then just going back to the sort of soft power cultural connections. I think this is a key part of the glue that is long sustained and not American reverence, but American curiosity, maybe some remnant of respect for the UK, whatever it might be, that in the MAGA mind, I think actually more broadly than the MAGA mind, but in general, lots of people see the UK as this declining decaying country that just doesn't know where it's going, it's confused, it's feckless, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, one official said to me that people, young people, especially, which is interesting, young people now see the Gulf in the same way that people used to see London, the sort of center of things, the cool place to be. So I think that's another aspect of the story and it elevates it onto a slightly longer term plane than just the war. Yes, I think so and what I found really interesting was that you do pick up and I've picked this up,

26:37this residual optimism among British politicians, but also civil servants involved in these kind of things that will just wait to trump out and then the special relationship will recover. But actually, even imagining a Democrat government coming in, Democrat president, that doesn't necessarily mean that there will automatically be a much warmer relationship because on the Democrat side, you've picked up in your reporting that there is this kind of sneering, but for different reasons about Britain being this kind of washed up colonial power. Right, exactly. I mean, Kamala Harris writes about this in a book when she was trying to bond with Joe Biden and her then boss. They would joke about British colonialism because she had Indian heritage and he had Irish heritage. So they sort of, they mocked the Brits and that was how they bond. So yes, there is this progressive strain that looks at the UK as this sort of fate of empire

27:37and that's actually not that far away from what the mega people think of, I think. It's so potent and I think we'll actually outlast. And it's quite so important for people to realize, but I also spoke to a man called Matt Duss who used to be Bernie Sanders is foreign policy advisor and he's very close to AOC now and he's a big figure in this foreign policy debate within the Democratic Party and I sort of said, well, you know, in Westminster, the saying that kids start up to Donald Trump finally and doesn't even believe in international law isn't that great and Lari Dhar and he was like, well, yeah, but a day later he cave so it doesn't really matter. That's how he sees it. He described Kirstauer as an insult to empty suits. So if that's the rhetoric from the sort of sister party albeit Matt Duss very much sits on the progressive side of the Democratic Party. But let's just take Newsom again. Newsom proudly Irish, heritage America identifies Irish

28:41but who's also from California, I don't think he's gonna be desperate to go for tea with Queen Camilla. You know, that's not gonna be top of his list in the same way that it might have been for Trump. So there needs to be, again, it comes back to the material and this reliance on this sort of the delusions of the special relationship, but they must be confronted and the greatest thing about the war and also one of the only good things about Trump as well is that he forces you to sort of reckon with the reality of the situation. Well, thanks so much, Freddie. I don't want to give away anymore if you're a great piece. I feel like we've already scooped ourselves quite enough on this podcast. But I do encourage all of our listeners and viewers to go and grab a copy of the new States when it's out this week. Nice to see you. And you. You've been listening to Daily Politics from the New Statesman with me, Anusha Kellyanne and my colleague, Freddie Haywood. This episode was produced by Biebercat. Our executive producer is Christo. The podcast will be back tomorrow.

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