Stop all the clocks. Cut off the telephone. Keir Starmer has finally discovered a backbone and stood up to Donald Trump.
‘I will not yield,’ he declared today. ‘Britain will not yield on our principles and values about the future of Greenland under threats of tariffs, and that is my clear position.’
To be equally clear, this dramatic riposte wasn’t delivered to Trump face to face.
Sir Keir instead chose to deliver it at Prime Minister’s Questions, flanked by the massed ranks of his own MPs. And when pressed by Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, he quickly reverted to type, mouthing the well-worn platitudes about the importance of maintaining the Special Relationship.
But credit where it’s due. Our Prime Minister finally brought the fire.
And this may yet prove to be more than a one-off. Yesterday I was talking to one of Starmer’s allies following Trump’s savage attack on his Chagos deal.
‘Trump will damage the Conservatives and the populists in the UK and Europe, lots of whom seem to have had their brains melted into thinking the average Brit relishes seeing outsiders criticise their country as much as they do,’ they claimed.
Kemi Badenoch, for one, has not had her brain melted. Indeed, she’s been having a good week. The polls show the voters responding positively to her pre-emptive sacking of Tory turncoat Robert Jenrick. And the defection of a second MP to Reform’s ranks ruffled few Westminster feathers.
But she is in danger of repeating the dangerous mistake currently being made by many on the Right. Which is to view Donald Trump as the enemy of their enemy – Starmer – and so to treat him as their friend.
At PMQs, Badenoch thought it would be a clever ruse to use Trump’s new-found criticism of the Chagos policy to bait him.
But for the first time in several weeks, Starmer was able to turn the tables. Trump had attacked him over Chagos ‘for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in relation to my values and principles on the future of Greenland,’ he fired back. ‘He wants me to yield on my position, and I’m not going to… Given that was his express purpose, I’m surprised the Leader of the Opposition has jumped on the bandwagon.’
The reality is that Starmer is right. Trump couldn’t point to Chagos on a map. He has zero understanding or appreciation of the strategic implications of the deal that Britain has struck with Mauritius.
He was indeed simply using the issue as a stick to beat his uppity ally for failing to endorse his Greenland adventurism.
And the fact that Badenoch couldn’t recognise that points to a wider issue – and the point at hand. Since his re-election, many on the Right have viewed Trump as some sort of political hero over the water.
He would help turn the tide on assaults on free speech. He would help prosecute the argument on immigration. He would finally vanquish the effete, woke, liberal elite.
But as Starmer is belatedly starting to recognise, there is political capital to be earned from starting to define yourself against the Godfather of the Maga movement – rather than attempt to ingratiate yourself with him.
To people focused on paying the bills and keeping food on the table, Trump has largely been an abstract, if occasionally amusing, curiosity.
But Britain can spot a bad ’un a mile off. And the President’s increasingly erratic arrogance and aggression are starting to cut through.
‘It’s beginning to get pick-up in the polls,’ another Labour source told me. ‘People don’t like him. And they don’t like British politicians associating with him.’
What Trump’s UK groupies in Reform and elsewhere need to realise is he appals most Britons – which means being associated with him is toxic.
There is significant lingering suspicion of the EU. But if the choice presented in a future referendum was a closer embrace of Brussels or a closer embrace of Maga Washington, all bets would be off.
Similarly, Red Wall Britain is desperate for an end to the small-boat invasion, and the control of our borders. But that doesn’t mean it fancies a British version of the murderous machismo being exhibited by some of Trump’s ICE stormtroopers.
And even if Badenoch, Nigel Farage and their allies don’t recognise the political necessity of distancing themselves from Trump, they should consider doing so for another reason. It’s the right thing.
Over the past few years, a passionate debate has been raging about the true character of Britain. And Trump is now providing us with a timely litmus test of who we are as a nation.
We have always been a country that stood against bullies. We abhor arrogance. As the Brexit vote proved, we are a people with a hunger for standing on our own two feet, for redefining ourselves as a sovereign nation.
So, it’s time for our political class, collectively and unequivocally, to tell Donald Trump where to get off. This is about values – the values of the West itself.
Yesterday, upon his arrival at Davos, Trump launched another attempt to force his supposed allies to back his Greenland occupation.
‘We won the war – we won it big. Without us you’d all be speaking German, with maybe a little bit of Japanese,’ he smirked.
This is not a man who needs a few careful words of admonition. But someone who should be told to stick his version of the Special Relationship where the sun doesn’t shine.
Keir Starmer has belatedly stood up to Donald Trump. It’s time for Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage to do the same.
