In public, Sir Keir Starmer’s charm offensive is well and truly under way after Donald Trump’s bombshell comeback election victory.
The Prime Minister offered his “hearty” congratulations to the president-elect, according to No 10, while the Foreign Secretary David Lammy has boasted of being offered a second portion of chicken at a dinner with the controversial convicted criminal in September.
But in private, while “subdued” and “depressed” Labour insiders are not exactly repeating Lammy’s past description of Trump as a “a racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”, they are fearful of what the Republican’s crushing win over Kamala Harris means for Starmer and his Government.
Despite the warm words from the Government, MPs and party insiders who have previously worked in US politics warn Trump’s victory is “really, really bad” for Starmer and will shape his entire time in No 10.
There is also nervousness in Labour ranks at whether the Democrats’ capitulation amid anger over the cost of living and high levels of irregular migration could come back to bite Starmer in 2029, as it did Harris and Joe Biden.
But before that, insiders warn Starmer’s Government is likely to be buffeted by an erratic and unpredictable White House at a time of grave global instability.
‘This will colour Starmer’s entire premiership’
A Labour MP, who worked in Washington DC during Trump’s first term, told i: “I hate to say it but the reality is this is going to colour the entire premiership of Keir.
“It has completely changed everything – every single thing we do, everything they do will be seen through the prism of this one man’s reaction.
“And that’s going to be exhausting.
“It was the last time when we were in opposition, let alone when we’re in the Government.”
The MP also warned that it comes at a time when Starmer is running out of allies on the world stage: “I feel for Keir, because I’m not sure his driving force in politics is to be a sort of co-ordinator and saviour of democracy.
“But when you look around the world – Scholz could be gone soon, Macron is running out of time, Trudeau is running out of time.
“There’s not a lot of leadership, so he’s going to really need a lot of support to do that.”
An insider who has worked with the US Democrats said the Trump campaign’s accusation that Labour interfered in the election because activists volunteered for the Harris campaign will not make “a big difference”.
But they went on: “Generally speaking this is really, really bad for Keir.”
The ‘political pain’ of trying to stay close to Trump
They warned of “political management pain every time Keir tries to stay close to Trump, constant disruptions and interference with their narrative, a huge loss of confidence from an absence of progressive policies and the presence of horrendous policies, a massive distraction on foreign affairs as we try and mitigate Ukraine and Israel policies, a possible trade war and a real meaningful impact on our own economy, and all perfect fodder for the right wing press to needle and needle and needle”.
A former Whitehall insider with direct experience of working with the first Trump administration offered a similarly stark assessment amid fears that the President-elect will pull US support for Ukraine, erect blanket 20 per cent tariffs on imports in a bid to protect the American economy, and potentially pull away from international institutions like Nato, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
“It’s petrifying,” the insider said. “I don’t want to be dramatic, but this could be the end of the era of America as a superpower.”
Starmer and his team at No 10 have however been preparing for a Trump win for some time.
As well as the courting of Trump and his allies, which was already under way by the highly-regarded British ambassador in Washington DC, Karen Pierce, the Government’s much vaunted Brexit reset has been designed with the American election in mind.
A source familiar with the conversations around preparing for a Trump win said: “Most of that has come in the form of a push for closer relationship with the EU with an eye on Ukraine and trade.
‘He will declare a stance out of nowhere’
But the source admits working with Trump is more difficult due to his unpredictable nature.
“It is not that he says one thing and then does something else, it is more that he will give little indication as to which direction he wants to go in so we have no time to prepare.
“Then one day he will just declare a stance out of nowhere. What are we supposed to do with that?”
This was echoed by Sir David Manning, British Ambassador to the US from 2003-2007, who told i: “We do know what Trump’s form was from the first presidency. We have an ambassador and her team who have been very careful to keep in touch with the Trump team.
“But I don’t want to suggest that Trump isn’t unpredictable. If Kamala Harris had won then we would have had a broad continuity in policy, but that’s no longer anticipated. The Government will have to be braced for the unpredictable and surprises.”
“We will have to see how Trump with an unexpectedly big mandate decides to use that. He could surprise us by being extremely tough in all areas, or he could surprise us by being more accommodating.”
The Labour MP who worked in DC said No 10 had made a good start but would need to be both “strategic” in their response and “shameless” in their courting of Trump.
“I do feel for the team,” they said. “They’re going to have to rapidly get their strategies together, which they have started to their credit, as it was really important that he had that meeting in the election campaign, and that’s something to build off.”
Resilience and the Royal family could help
In terms of strategy: “You’ve just got to keep doing it, and you’ve got to be quite resilient, because there is inevitably going to be stuff like David [Lammy] tweeted several years ago – there’s no shortage of those things, right? So I think you’ve just got to use the assets that we have, like the Royal Family and all of that stuff, which we know he’s into.”
Emily Thornberry, the Labour MP and Commons Foreign Affairs Committee chair, however suggested Starmer should be wary of getting too close to Trump, particularly as he touts controversial policies such as the so-called “Muslim ban” and mass deportations.
“It is in Britain’s interests not to alienate the President-elect of the USA, they are close allies,” she said. “But we must of course balance this with standing up for our values and beliefs. There is no need to hold his hand.”
Others are concerned about the wider implications of the US election result. Trump defied the polls with a thumping presidential election win and is course to take both the House and the Senate amid voter anger over the cost of living and concern about high levels of irregular migration that has echoes the UK’s Channel small boats crisis.
Luke Akehurst, an MP and influential figure among Labour centrists, told i: “In terms of electoral lessons, it shows we need to deliver on cost of living and jobs for our equivalent of the ‘rust belt’ former industrial communities that backed Trump.”
There is also the spectre of Nigel Farage, a longstanding ally of Trump, subverting the Starmer Government’s efforts to keep the next president onside.
The Reform leader’s offer to help the PM build diplomatic relations with Trump was rejected this week.
‘Farage can f**k right off’
But No 10 remain “unruffled” by the prospect of Farage going rogue and undermining Starmer and Lammy’s own conversations with Trump and his team, pointing to Starmer’s dinner with Trump this year, a phone call after his re-election and another after the assassination attempt.
“We are focused on the Government’s relationship with the US,” a source said.
A Labour MP put it more plainly: “Farage thinks he can be a bridge between Trump and the UK Government. He can f**k right off.”
And another argued that a Trump victory could actually be good for Labour on a domestic political level, because it would serve as a “cautionary tale” about the dangers of populism.
“That style of politics is damaged by it,” they said. The MP added that a re-elected Trump could exert a gravitational pull on the Tories, dragging them in the direction of “completely pointless culture wars”. They said it would be “very hard in a Trump world for [the Tories] to do a David Cameron-esque tack to the country”.
But there are also concerns about whether disinformation will flourish under a president who can be economical with the truth and who counts controversial X owner Elon Musk as a major ally.
Trump previously caused trouble for then-prime minister Theresa May by amplifying British far-right disinformation on Twitter, the social media platform that Musk bought and renamed X.
Matthew McGregor, a former adviser to Ed Miliband as Labour leader who also worked as digital rapid response director for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012, told i: “The impact of Trump’s lies are felt far beyond America’s shores. The UK knows that his past promotion of far right groups like Britain First on Twitter. His acolyte Elon Musk has made X a valuable platform for Tommy Robinson.
“European governments, including our own, need to get more serious about countering the threat of disinformation. That means adopting new more robust approaches to engaging with and correcting lies from government platforms, even if those lies come from the president of the United States.”
'President Musk' is flexing his muscles and revealing how weak Trump is