Why world needs Keir Starmer to play role of 'Trump whisperer', however distasteful it is

With such a figure as the supposed ‘leader of the free world’, it’s hard not to feel sorry for Keir Starmer, as he prepares to visit Washington this week. The Prime Minister appears to lack the kind of bonhomie that Boris Johnson, for all his many faults, was able to use to butter Trump up.

One can only hope Starmer finds another way to be effective as Europe’s ‘Trump whisperer’. Labour’s reaction to the US President’s disgraceful attack on Volodymyr Zelensky, in which he called the Ukrainian President a “dictator”, was the correct way to handle it – saying this was not true and calling Zelensky to offer support, but not actually attacking Trump personally, for all that he richly deserved it.

A holding operation

Essentially, Starmer’s task is to placate Trump, talk him out of his worst instincts on issues like Ukraine, trade wars and territorial expansion, and keep the US within the global family of liberal democracies. It is a holding operation, in the hope that the next American leader will not be a Trumpian or, if loopholes in the US Constitution are exploited to enable a third term, Trump.

As galling as it is, Starmer must bite his tongue, resist any gag reflexes and act as if Trump is a decent human being, not just in the national interest, but that of the democratic world. It would be a diplomatic catastrophe of historic proportions if the world’s other democratic leaders were to push him into the waiting arms of the blood-soaked Putin with a few deservedly harsh words.

All those outside of government, however, have no such excuse to avoid forthright condemnation of Trump. Indeed, the rest of us have a duty to do so to prevent empty Trumpian politics gaining an even greater foothold in the UK.