“Keir Starmer snubbed by not being invited to US President Donald Trump’s inauguration”- so say the tabloid headlines. Indeed Sunder Katwala, former director of the Fabian Society notes that no prime minister has ever been invited to a US Presidential inauguration.
So much for press impartiality! Donald Trump is potentially lining up his allies like you would toy soldiers when he devised his invite list this time around. One hopes that they all fall like dominoes, as it’s worth noting that many of the people that Trump has invited to his upcoming inauguration are the dictators and despots of the world. I’m not sure Keir Starmer would appreciate being among the insalubrious company of Xi Jinping, Javier Milei, Jair Bolsonaro and Viktor Orban, with the possibility of Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-Un popping in unannounced.
Even if Starmer had been invited, that company is enough to put anyone off their burger and fries. It’s a genuine Rogues’ Gallery of villainy and yet we are supposed to take solace in the special relationship with the US. I’m not even sure I’d categorise Starmer as an ally of Trump. Apparently Starmer defines himself as a woke socialist, words that I’m certain Trump would find abhorrent. Trump’s current invitees are certainly not what anyone would describe as woke.
But perhaps the idea of Wokism, that Trump so readily attacks, is one that is already a false one. To be woke is to be fair, to be just, and this is the difficulty that the right is currently tying themselves in knots over. Theirs is a world where the unjust is justifiable, unless it’s against them. They don’t want to be woke. Woke is a word that has been harnessed by the rightwing and spurred on by the media, and Trump has seized this territory of anti-woke to be his emblem, the thing that will propel him once again to prominence on the global stage and to be the media’s favourite topic of the day.
Trump-supporting media seem to understand all too well that providing context would send their arguments toppling like a house of cards. Whilst Trump’s outward opinions are certainly more bombastic than his predecessors and likely his successors, this does not entail that they will lead to any kind of action other than performative. A lot of it is bluff and bluster. It was nearly 10 years ago that Trump promised a wall, and Trump’s administration barely managed 15 miles of new wall in his first term. What’s more dangerous is that Trump’s rhetoric will perhaps lead to his own demise. Like any rabble rouser, he’s riling people up, and then producing nothing. Because of this we cannot assume that Trump is a good actor, in a way that we have with other presidents.
The UK do not have the upper-hand in any relationship with the USA, because put quite plainly, we don’t have much to offer other than common sense, and Trump’s sense is horrifically uncommon, more akin to Ester Mcvey’s dalliances with the topic. It could be that the UK are not the audience that President Trump wants to court, or it could even be that we have so ridiculously inflated our own self-importance over the years. Gone are the days of Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves. Trump knows this and will not hesitate to cut off the limb that only British politicians refer to as the special relationship.
The UK government should be under no illusions here, and seek a potential renewal of relations with allies closer to home, countries that luckily rank higher on the Corruption Perceptions Index than the USA. This surely won’t have passed Keir Starmer’s advisors by, but we hold on to the special relationship like a poisoned chalice, when really it’s a ticking time bomb. No leader is entirely faultless but Trump takes the biscuit with his concern for egotism far above the national interest. Perhaps this will make him treat his second time in office with more urgency than his first, but his grouping of allies doesn’t fill me with hope. Unless he amends the constitution, he’s only got one shot left at the prize role. A man is judged by the company he keeps and judging by Trump’s companions, he’s got a long way to go.
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