Labour’s diplomatic coup

The term ‘special relationship’ might have meant something in the past, but these days it sounds like a distinct anachronism.

It’s no use pretending that the US and the UK enjoy a partnership of equals. The US is clearly the senior partner, and there are few signs that she singles Britain out for preferential treatment.

For example, it was only on 26 December, 2006, that Britain finished paying back the Lend-Lease debts to the US. It’s useful to remember that massive American supplies to the Soviet Union were offered for free – this though Stalin started the war as Hitler’s ally, and Britain fought Nazism alone for the first two years.

In a later conflict, Ronald Reagan denied Britain any assistance during the Falklands war, and his Defence Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, had to take it upon himself to furnish the British forces with last-minute satellite intelligence.

However, even if Britain’s relationship with the US may not be special, it’s certainly vitally important. The two countries are NATO allies and, since Britain isn’t exactly pulling her weight in collective defence, our security largely depends on America’s willingness to come to our aid should the going get tough.

A trade deal with the US would also come in handy, and its likelihood wholly depends on the benevolence of the next US administration. There too one detects no parity: such a deal is more important for Britain than for America, by far.

Against the background I’ve outlined in extremely broad strokes, Britain must cover her bets and secure friendly relations with the next US president, whoever he – or in this case she – will be. Alas, just as Trump’s campaign began to gain momentum, Starmer’s government committed an act of unspeakable folly.

Senior Labour figures, doubtless with Starmer’s blessing, are doing all they can to help Harris into the White House. In August, Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff, and Matthew Doyle, his director of communications, along with several top Labour MPs, attended the Democratic National Convention.

Contrary to their subsequent denials, they weren’t there just as so many flies on the wall. Dover MP Mike Trump, who was there, explained that: “We went back out after our landslide victory, to impart some of our knowledge as to what we learnt on the campaign trail, and look at what they are doing with their campaign.”

Now it has turned out that Labour are sending over not only strategists but also foot soldiers to lend Kamala a helping hand. Last Wednesday, Sofia Patel, Labour’s director of operations, asked for volunteers to travel to swing states in the US to do their bit.

“I have nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former) going to the US in the next few weeks heading to North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia,” went her LinkedIn post. “I have ten spots available for anyone to head to the battleground state of North Carolina – we will sort your housing.”

That last sentence hints at a possible breach of the US law that only permits foreign volunteers to take part in such campaigning if they aren’t getting paid. It can be argued that the promise of free accommodation constitutes payment, but frankly I don’t care one way or the other.

What concerns me isn’t the fine points of the US electoral law but the obvious points of Britain’s foreign policy. And, true to form, Labour has shown yet again that it puts ideology before national interests not only in domestic but also in foreign affairs.

Trump, for all his faults, is well-disposed towards Britain. He has extensive business interests here, but one can detect that his affection for our country isn’t just motivated by pecuniary considerations.

Harris, on the other hand, doesn’t even bother to conceal how passionately she dislikes Britain. She holds Britain’s colonial past against her, presumably because Kamala’s father, Marxist professor of economics, must have been terribly oppressed in Jamaica, all the way to Stanford University.

However, even if it were the other way round, with Harris loving Britain and Trump hating her, openly supporting one candidate against the other would be an act of rank stupidity. What if the other candidate wins? The other candidate being Trump in this case, how willing will he be to remain Britain’s friend for the next four years?

Like all narcissists, and even his most fanatic supporters accept he is just that, old Donald neither forgives slights nor, more to the point, forgets them. He sees foreign policy as so many deals based on personal relationships, and he views other leaders in binary terms.

Whatever their politics, if they get along with Donald, and especially if they are effusive in their praise of him, he describes them in glowing terms. And if they are more reserved, they rate nothing but the kind of terminology that used to be off limits on global diplomacy.

For the time being, the Trump campaign has filed a formal protest, citing Patel’s post as proof that the Labour expeditionary corps is staffed not with disinterested idealists but with people given a financial incentive. Regardless of how the protest pans out, Starmer’s relations with Trump may be irreparably damaged – and so will be Britain’s relations with the US should Trump win in November.

As it is, I can’t imagine Trump ever being ready to do business with Starmer’s foreign secretary David Lammy. Our top diplomat is on record calling Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath”, a “tyrant in a toupee” and a “dangerous clown”. Though he indulged in such rhetoric when merely a backbencher, he may well be a persona non grata in a Trump White House.

(This kind of logorrhoea follows the Left’s long tradition of flinging epithets at their adversaries. Kamala herself is hardly pulling punches. She has described Trump as “increasingly unhinged and unstable”, adding that he “certainly falls into the general definition of fascists”. To be fair, Donald isn’t above responding in kind.)

The events since then won’t help Trump to forget those insults, especially since Starmer has already stated that a Trump victory would be “undesirable”. All this goes to show that His Majesty’s government enjoying a 282-seat parliamentary majority is driven by ideological zeal only, not by the country’s interests.

Driving jobs and capital out of Britain, suffocating the economy with extortionate taxes and “workers’ rights” (empowering the unions), introducing laws against free speech, and now conceivably alienating Britain’s most important ally – all these are different manifestations of the same destructive ideology. That means we’re in for a rough ride in more ways than one – but then you already know this.