Donald Trump will view Keir Starmer as a ‘lightweight woke lefty’ and will not trust him, a top US analyst has warned.
Nile Gardiner, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, told DailyMail.com that the President-elect would see the Prime Minister as a ‘novice’ when it comes to negotiating.
The Labour leader is currently ‘in the dog house’ after dozens of Labour activists flew to the US to help Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the election.
Mr Gardiner said that relations are so bad Sir Keir might not even be welcome at Mr Trump’s Florida estate were he to fly there and kiss the ring.
But he could start by sacking his foreign secretary David Lammy, who has called the President-elect a ‘serial liar’ and a ‘wannabe despot’ in the past.
The incident with Labour activists in the final weeks of the US election, which Mr Trump won convincingly, led the Trump campaign to file a complaint with the American election regulator, the FEC.
Sir Keir tried to patch things over with Mr Trump by pointing to the dinner they shared in New York in September.
And after Mr Trump’s surprise landslide against Ms Harris, the Prime Minister has talked about how ‘crucial’ a strong US / UK relationship is.
Mr Gardiner however said there would be ‘significant tensions ahead’ when it came to Britain and America.
The ‘Special Relationship’ would come under strain because Sir Keir ‘represents a socialist worldview and agenda that’s an anathema to Trump’.
Mr Gardiner said: ‘I do not think Donald Trump will trust Keir Starmer at all.
‘I think he will view Starmer and the Labour government in many respects as problematic.’
The two men are likely to clash over the Middle East with Labour recently banning some arms sales to Israel while Mr Trump will be one of the country’s strongest supporters.
The same dynamic will play out with regards to Israeli attacks on Iran which Labour are more cautious about.
On climate there are big differences too and even on Brexit, Sir Keir is far softer than Mr Trump.
Mr Gardiner said: ‘Mr Trump will hold Starmer’s feet to the fire on Brexit. Trump intensely dislikes supranationalism and has a sceptical view of the EU.’
There is also a breakdown on a personal level too, despite the two-hour charm offensive Sir Keir deployed over dinner in September.
‘Mr Trump will view Starmer as lightweight and as a novice on the international stage,’ Mr Gardiner said.
‘He will view Starmer as a woke lefty and Trump doesn’t like woke lefties’.
But the biggest divide may well be the more than 100 Labour activists who flew to the US to campaign on behalf of Ms Harris.
In the complaint to the FEC, the Trump campaign demanded an inquiry into ‘immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference’.
The complaint cited a now-deleted post on LinkedIn by Sofia Patel, head of operations at the Labour Party, which said 100 staffers were going to be working in battleground states like North Carolina and Nevada.
The six page document cited a report in the Telegraph which said staffers from Labour would have to be on holiday and be paying their own way.
Rules about foreigners working in US elections are strict and state that they must volunteer and cannot receive any payment.
Mr Gardiner said: ‘This is an extremely serious matter and hugely damaging to Sir Keir in terms of his relationship with Trump and the Trump administration.
‘Sir Keir underestimated the damage this has caused and clearly he thought Harris would win.
‘That may explain why the Prime Minister Starmer handled it very badly. He should have apologised and called his Labour activists back to the UK. He didn’t do that. That was a big mistake.
‘There are going to be significant implications from this: the Trump administration won’t trust Sir Keir and Labour and will view them as adversarial and batting for the other side.
‘The damage for the UK is very, very significant here. It should not be underestimated.’
Mr Gardiner predicted there would be Congressional hearings on the use of Labour activists, not least because Republicans have won back control of the Senate with the House still to play for.
‘I think Keir Starmer is in the dog house right now and I’m not sure he would be welcome at Mar-a-Lago right now,’ Mr Gardiner said.
‘Sir Keir is viewed as part and parcel of the Harris operation’.
Firing Mr Lammy for his ‘vicious’ attacks on Mr Trump would be a start, Mr Gardiner said.
Among the barbs directed at Mr Trump by Mr Lammy on social media include the quip: ‘If Trump did GCSEs he wouldn’t make it to sixth form.’
Mr Lammy has said that Mr Trump is a ‘neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath’ and mocked him as a ‘troll’ who is ‘truly beneath contempt’.
Now that same man will be sitting at the table with Mr Lammy talking about Britain’s future relationship with the US.
Mr Gardiner said: ‘The smartest thing would be to sack David Lammy and apologise for the intervention by Labour staffers.
‘But I’m in no doubt that it will be practically impossible for Sir Keir to work with the Trump Presidency’.
KEIR STARMER
Last year, Sir Keir compared the Conservative Party with Mr Trump as he accused the Tories of falling far from Churchillian values.
‘Is there anybody in the Government now who feels a sense of obligation to anything other than their own self-interest? To democracy, the rule of law, serving our country?’ he asked in a speech in Buckinghamshire.
‘An entitlement to power totally unchecked by any sense of service or responsibility – that’s the cultural stain that runs through the modern Conservative Party.’
He added: ‘These aren’t Churchill’s Tories any more. If anything they behave more and more like Donald Trump. They look at the politics of America and they want to bring that here.
‘It’s all woke, woke, woke. Wedge, wedge, wedge. Divide, divide, divide.’
In June, the prime minister said following Mr Trump’s hush money trial conviction that it was an ‘unprecedented situation’.
‘We will work with whoever is elected president … that’s what you’d expect,’ Sir Keir said.
‘We have a special relationship with the US that transcends whoever the president is, but it is an unprecedented situation, there is no doubt about that.’
In the lead up to this year’s US presidential election, Sir Keir maintained that the Government will work with whoever is president.
FOREIGN SECRETARY DAVID LAMMY
In 2017, Mr Lammy called Mr Trump a ‘racist and KKK/neo-Nazi sympathiser’.
A year later, the Tottenham MP wrote in Time magazine that he would be protesting against the then-government’s ‘capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee’, in reference to Mr Trump’s first official visit to the UK.
‘Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath,’ Mr Lammy wrote, ‘he is also a profound threat to the international order that has been the foundation of Western progress for so long.’
Asked about his past comments earlier this year, Mr Lammy said: ‘Where I can find common cause with Donald Trump, I will find common cause’.
He offered his congratulations to Mr Trump on Wednesday morning, saying: ‘We look forward to working with you and @JDVance in the years ahead.’
DEPUTY PM ANGELA RAYNER
Ms Rayner has publicly criticised Mr Trump more than once in posts on X, formerly Twitter.
On the day of the Capitol Hill riots in 2021, she tweeted: ‘The violence that Donald Trump has unleashed is terrifying, and the Republicans who stood by him have blood on their hands.’
Later in January that year, Ms Rayner said of the inauguration of Joe Biden as president: ‘I am so happy to see the back of Donald Trump, but even more so to see @KamalaHarris as VP.’
HEALTH SECRETARY WES STREETING
In 2017, Mr Streeting called Trump an ‘odious, sad little man’ in a post on X.
‘Imagine being proud to have that as your president,’ he added.
Asked on Tuesday about the social media post, the Health Secretary told Good Morning Britain: ‘The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have been working hard to build a relationship with President Trump and his team, so that in the event that he is elected as the next president of the United States, we start with the strong working relationship which is in our national interest and in the interests of the United States as well.’
ENERGY SECRETARY ED MILIBAND
Mr Miliband labelled Mr Trump a ‘groper’ and a ‘racist’ in November 2016.
‘The idea that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief,’ Mr Miliband told the BBC.
‘And I think we should be deeply worried about the implications for many of the things that we care about. Tackling climate change – he says it’s invented by the Chinese, climate change, it’s a hoax. His attitude to Russia.
‘And then this fantasy about trade. I mean, this guy is anti-trade. He’s an odd combination of protectionism, plus the old trickle-down formula that has got us into a lot of this mess in the first place.’