How Trump made Farage look a fool and Starmer a prime minister

Moments after the plane had taken off from Andrews military airport in Washington DC to take Keir Starmer and his entourage home, an emotionally drained but clearly happy prime minister walked down the aircraft for a mini victory lap for what he and his team considered to be a triumphant trip to the White House.

While he felt he had achieved as much as he could have hoped for on his foreign policy agenda, the real success for the prime minister though may have actually been in terms of domestic politics.

In particular there was one big loser from what transpired in the Oval Office on Thursday – Nigel Farage.

The key moment came when a journalist shouted out a question to President Trump asking him if he would veto the Chagos deal. Trump’s answer stunned everyone listening by endorsing the proposal.

“I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country. I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well,” he said.

After months of doubts and at least two major dossiers being handed to the president by Farage and his allies with claims he would veto the deal we finally had his answer.

The answer was music to Starmer’s ears, but it will have come as a major blow to Farage and Kemi Badenoch’s Tories.

After claiming Trump was obsessed with the Chagos Islands, the US president made Farage look like a fool by endorsing the deal. And it brings back into focus serious question marks over how much of his famous friendship with Trump is true, or even matters.

Already it had been noted how the Trump family had not gone to Farage’s party in DC ahead of the inauguration and how the Reform leader had not had a one to one or been allowed into the rotunda for the swearing in (unlike Boris Johnson).

The Elon Musk jibe about Farage not being fit to lead Reform stung at the time and has cast a shadow since.

The suggestion Farage is just a Trump fanboy is beginning to get more credence.

This is significant, because Farage has partly pinned his future success on his relationship with the US president and that he is some sort of Trump whisperer. He appears to spend more time in America than in his own Clacton constituency because he knows how important it is to his political brand.

But Farage’s name was not mentioned once by anyone in the Oval Office or subsequent press conference – instead it was the relationship with Starmer that Trump described as “getting on famously” about.

It may help that Starmer has decided to take an almost supine position with the President most notably thanking him “for changing the conversation on Ukraine” and endorsing his desire for peace there.

Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch who had gone all in on the Chagos issue just ahead of the bilateral was a complete non-factor reduced to tweeting about how she agreed with Starmer’s three main aims.

Already, Starmer’s decision earlier in the week to slash foreign aid and boost defence spending had defanged two key battleground issues for his rightwing opponents. Even if it has cost him a minister, annoyed many in Labour and been condemned by charities and NGOs, the politics of it were sound, although credit was being given to his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney who was also very visible in the Oval Office.

Whatever people assess about what Starmer got out of the meeting in terms of actual policy gains Starmer certainly discovered his inner prime minister. Who would have believed that it would be an apparent bromance between himself and Trump in the White House which would bring out the best in the Labour leader?

How quickly things can change.

It was only weeks ago that Trump’s ally Musk was using his X platform to berate the British prime minister for “two tier justice” and alleged attacks on free speech in the most graphic terms.

Just last month Trump allies were briefing that Starmer’s choice of ambassador to the US Lord Mandelson might have his credentials rejected. Farage, meanwhile, was claiming that Trump would humiliate Starmer over the Chagos Islands deal.

Instead, Starmer walked away from that first meeting with his opponents at home diminished, his own reputation enhanced and hopes that he can build on it to become a serious statesman.

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