Keir Starmer's 'nightmare' Trump victory

Melania and Donald Trump at an election night event in West Palm Beach, Florida

(Image credit: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

published 7 November 2024

Donald Trump is celebrating his presidential win, but it is going to be a "howling nightmare" for the UK government, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer.

While Keir Starmer has congratulated the president-elect on his election victory, the "truth universally acknowledged by officials in private" is that "a second Trump presidency will be a clear and present danger to the UK's most vital national interests".

Let's not forget that David Lammy, now foreign secretary, once called Trump a "neo-Nazi sociopath", said Tom Harris in The Telegraph. And when polling suggested Kamala Harris "was about to sweep all before her" 100 current and former Labour Party staff headed to the US to campaign for the Democrats. Nobody cared that "The Orange One" was outraged as he seemed like a "dead-cert loser" at the time. "Well, 'oops', as they say."

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The new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the Commons yesterday that an apology was in order for Lammy's "derogatory and scatological references", to which Starmer pointed out that he and the foreign secretary had met Trump in New York for dinner in September, describing it as a "constructive exercise". A No. 10 spokesman later said the PM would "of course welcome a visit" from Trump to the UK in the future.

While the US and UK leaders might not share the same "worldview", said Victoria Honeyman, professor of British politics at the University of Leeds, on The Conversation, a friendly rapport certainly "makes the cogs turn considerably more easily". Trump and Starmer's relationship "does not have to be stormy". In the end, the UK government will have "no option" but to work with Trump "as best they can".

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Richard Windsor is a freelance writer for The Week Digital. He began his journalism career writing about politics and sport while studying at the University of Southampton. He then worked across various football publications before specialising in cycling for almost nine years, covering major races including the Tour de France and interviewing some of the sport’s top riders. He led Cycling Weekly’s digital platforms as editor for seven of those years, helping to transform the publication into the UK’s largest cycling website. He now works as a freelance writer, editor and consultant.