British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has ‘done a very good job’ – an assessment with which fewer than one in ten UK voters agree. The view in a letter from an old leftie to the Guardian? No, President Trump’s opinion. He’s also said that, in line with tradition, Britain could be the first country he visits.

Not many observers of Trump associate him with gracious diplomacy to old Trotskyists who loathe him. But in fact this wasn’t the first time Trump has treated the robotic, hard-left Starmer with surprising courtesy. Last September not only did Trump invite him to dinner, he said he was ‘very popular’ and ‘nice’.

Trump’s flattery towards Starmer at first glance seems seriously odd given that he appears to have done his best to ruin any relationship with the returning president.  Few political organisations have a record of so much personal hatred for Trump as the British Labour party and his re-election was its worst nightmare. Such was Starmer’s desperation to prevent it, he ignored warnings Trump was likely to win and sent 100 Labour activists to help Harris’s campaign.  The Republicans were offended and amazed he did this after receiving Trump’s hospitality, and accused Labour of illegal election interference.

Trumpworld then struggled to make sense of his decision to nominate Labour apparatchik Peter Mandelson as ambassador in Washington, again astonishingly without first consulting Trump. Like most senior Labour politicians, Mandelson has grievously insulted Trump, calling him a ‘danger to the world’, ‘a bully’ and ‘little short of a white nationalist and racist’. He also was famously close to Jeffrey Epstein. Moreover all his political enthusiams – from ‘climate change action’ to being fiercely pro-EU and pally with China – are anathema to Trumpworld. A dossier on his dodgy Chinese connections has been handed to the FBI. Trump, it is said, ‘doesn’t like’ Mandelson.

Then, already in a deep hole, Starmer dug deeper by trying to finalise a deal with Mauritius which would risk the future of one of America’s most important military bases, Diego Garcia. Starmer had decided the UK was ‘obliged’ to comply with a UN ruling that the Chagos Islands, officially the British Indian Ocean Territory, which includes Diego Garcia, should be handed over to Mauritius, good friend of China and increasingly of Iran. Britain has no such legal obligation. Starmer seems to have been motivated to give the islands away because of his worship of ‘international law’ and his craving for applause for a ‘decolonising’ gesture from global progressives.

Labour’s solution for Diego Garcia was to lease it back. The Biden administration, probably preoccupied with another transgender rights initiative in the military, was relaxed about this. But after Trump’s election, his team objected. Insanely, Starmer initially tried to sneak the deal through ahead of Trump’s inauguration, frantically increasing his bribe offer to Mauritius to £9 billion as time ran out (despite claiming there’s no money for anything domestically). Starmer only gave up when Trump insisted that he pause the deal until he was in office. Humiliatingly, it’s probably dead. The episode has hugely increased mistrust of Starmer in Trumpworld.

Measured by White House actions, as opposed to Trump’s honeyed words, all the signs on relations with Starmer are ominous.  No one from his government was invited to Trump’s inauguration. At a British embassy party to celebrate the inauguration, no member of Trump’s team turned up. And while Trump mostly leaves the fierce ‘bad cop’ commentary on British Labour to Elon Musk and other advisors, occasionally his real view trickles out, as when he posted on Truth Social, ‘The UK is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of windmills!’ A Trump advisor has revealed, ‘If he could get away with it, President Trump would happily not exchange a single word with Starmer over the next four years.’

Mandelson is reportedly telling friends that Trump has accepted his nomination.  Some around the President question that.  Still, Trump might see advantages in accepting a discredited and vulnerable but politically well-connected Mandelson who will be desperate to keep his job by delivering what Trump wants from Britain – a state visit involving lots of time with the royals, an invitation to address parliament (blocked by the Speaker during a visit in 2019) and possibly a military contribution by Britain to a wider European peace-keeping force in a Trump-brokered Ukrainian peace deal. Starmer’s unlikely to get much in return.  Trump offered Theresa May a free trade deal, which she failed to seize. Starmer wants to revive the idea.  But unlike ‘tariffs’, ‘free trade’ these days doesn’t feature among Trump’s ‘beautiful’ words. His largesse to Britain might just extend to exempting it from the tariffs he’s hitting so many others with – if Starmer’s lucky.

Trump and his team see Starmer’s regime as a negative example – out-of-control immigration, economy-wrecking climate madness and surging taxes, two-tier justice and Orwellian restrictions on freedom of speech.  Britons increasingly incline to a similar view. And the trial of Akel Rudakubana, the murderer of three girls at a Taylor Swift dance class in Southport last July, is the latest episode which casts Labour in a terrible light. Probably the most damaging aspect is the character flaws it highlighted in Starmer.  On the day after the murders – and after he would have learnt the horrific details which have now been revealed – Starmer went to Southport and spent nineteen seconds laying a wreath. He didn’t talk to the grieving families or visit those injured in hospital but did manage to visit a mosque. And then it was back to London to party with, among others, Lord Alli, who had showered him and his ministeral colleagues with freebies.

Long soft-left, Britain’s voters are now moving to the right. As many cast their eyes enviously across the Atlantic to Trump’s war on illegal immigration and wokery, his ally Nigel Farage suddenly has the best approval ratings of any party leader and his Reform UK is now consistently ahead of both Labour and the Tories. The next UK elections are probably more than four years away. Yet signs are already accumulating that Britain’s century of Tory-Labour dominance could be on the way out – and that it might eventually get its own Trump moment.