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3 hours ago
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Don’t mention the trade war. Don’t mention anything much, come to think of it. Stick to generalised soundbites. Careless talk costs lives. Keir Starmer’s trip to Brussels to meet EU leaders was fraught with danger. Don’t say anything too complimentary about the EU as all the Brexiters will go mad and shout “betrayal”. Don’t sound too hostile about the EU as remainers will also be up in arms. Try to find the tricky balance of somewhere in between. A politeness that lands the right side of indifference.
Then there’s the US to worry about. How to cope with the orange manchild. Too much independence of thought and you might feel the full weight of trade tariffs. Time to bury your self-worth and go into full-fawning mode. Few people had ever come unstuck by telling Donald Trump he was an undiscovered genius. No one said that being prime minister was going to be easy. Or dignified.
It was a tough act to pull off, but Starmer just about managed it in a very brisk press conference with the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, on Monday afternoon. Just the barest minimum. Opening statements that were so dull they died on the lips – precious little sign of Starmer’s delivery being improved by a voice coach here – and then three questions from the broadcasters. Then out of there.
Rutte got things under way. Nato was amazing. The UK was amazing. The west had never been more united. That’s not quite how the rest of the world might see it with the US imposing tariffs on Canada – the ones on Mexico have been deferred for a month – and Trump talking about making Greenland another US state. But hey. If the Nato secretary general says he’s relaxed about all this, then who are we to argue. Situation Normal All Fucked Up.
Next up was Starmer. He too was thrilled about the Nato project. It was good to be in Brussels. Though not too good. No one should think the UK might be about to enter negotiations to rejoin the EU. We just wanted the best proper relations while taking advantage of all the Brexit benefits. There was a 10-second pause while he tried to remember what they were. No. Me neither.
Moving on. Britain was standing up to Russia. Nato was standing up to Russia. We were all behind Ukraine. President Trump had rattled Putin. A quick bit of fanboying the president never did any harm. We were spending 2.3% of GDP on defence. Tank production had reached a record high. Or something.
Mysteriously, the three broadcasters had little interest in what Rutte and Starmer had just said. They wanted to talk about The Donald. Was he bad news for Europe and international trade, asked Sky’s Beth Rigby.
“There are always issues between allies,” said Rutte. The current difficulties were much ado about nothing. Trade war? What trade war? He was sure Trump would see sense about imposing tariffs on the EU. Mmm. This showed a touching faith in the president’s proximity to rational thought.
Starmer wasted no time in praising The Donald. There was nothing remotely weird about a president who was so obviously an unreconstructed narcissist. If only more leaders were that shade of orange. The world would be a far safer place. Trump had been right to think about tariffs because so many people now took free trade for granted. Only someone as brilliant as Trump could possibly have reintroduced them.
And he was delighted to report that though the Office for National Statistics (ONS) had said the UK had a trade surplus with the US, he was more than happy to accept the American figures that showed it was the US in surplus. So tariffs were strictly an EU problem. Far be it from him to interfere in a dispute with two such dear friends. But just to wipe the slate clean, he was now going to sack everyone at the ONS for even suggesting the UK was in surplus. There. Was that brown-nosing enough? I rather think it was.
The second question came from the BBC. Could we return to reality? A trade war was not normal. Neither was the US threatening to annex Greenland. This wasn’t how politics worked. Once again Rutte went out of his way to point out that Trump was the only sane one in the room. It was the rest of the world that was out of whack. Above all, he was enormously grateful for alerting the west to the geo-strategic nature of Greenland.
Before The Donald’s intervention, he had never really given Greenland another thought. It was just an empty white space on the map. And all Mercator projections showed Greenland to be thousands of miles away from Russia. But now he had had time to look at a globe, he had come to appreciate just how important the country was.
And guess what? Under all that snow and ice, Trump had discovered loads of rare minerals. So could we all have three cheers for the president. If I was a Greenlander, that little exchange wouldn’t have been entirely reassuring.
Yes, said Starmer. Hooray for this Brilliant Orangeness. He just wanted to remind everyone that Trump had said he might not impose tariffs on the UK. So that was tremendously good news. There again he had also said “the UK was well out of line” – but maybe that was a joke. Or maybe he wasn’t entirely clear of the difference between the UK and the EU. But never mind. He was just Little Keir. And Little Keir wanted to get on with everyone. He loved the EU and the US. Couldn’t we all just be friends?
Before Rutte and Starmer could declare their undying faith in the Supreme Intellect again, a Nato official intervened to declare that the press conference was done and dusted in under 15 minutes. Mark and Keir needed no second invitation. Anything to get away from their cloying bath of enforced sycophancy. Let’s hope they had a couple’s therapy session straight afterwards to cleanse themselves of the shame.
On the way out, a Sun journalist shouted out a question. Had Starmer broken lockdown rules by employing a voice coach. Er … no he hadn’t. The rules on key workers were surprisingly loose in Westminster. Even I was a key worker. The bar doesn’t get much lower than that. Still, nice of the Tories to keep reminding us that it was them that consistently broke the lockdown rules.
