Donald Trump will view Sir Keir Starmer as a “novice” when it comes to negotiating, one expert has today claimed following Trump’s comfortable US election triumph
Donald Trump will regard Sir Keir Starmer as a “lightweight woke lefty” and will not trust him, a top US analyst has warned today.
The President-elect is likely to view the Prime Minister as a “novice” when it comes to negotiating, according to Nile Gardiner, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom.
Dozens of Labour activists flew to the US to help Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in the election. Mr Gardiner fears relations between 78-year-old Trump and Starmer, 62, have deteriorated as a result.
The expert also believes Starmer should sack foreign secretary David Lammy, who has called the President-elect a “serial liar” and a “wannabe despot” in the past. This was raised during Prime Minister’s Questions today, during which Starmer sidestepped any criticism to stress he and Trump have had “very constructive” conversations on global issues recently.
Nevertheless, Mr Gardiner said there would be “significant tensions ahead” when it came to Britain and America. He pointed out he feels Trump will not trust Starmer easily.
Speaking to Mail Online, the analyst said Trump and Starmer are likely to clash over the Middle East with Labour recently banning some arms sales to Israel while 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.
“Mr Trump will view Starmer as lightweight and as a novice on the international stage. He will view Starmer as a woke lefty and Trump doesn’t like woke lefties,” Mr Gardiner said.
Trump won the US election convincingly despite Labour activists flying to the US to campaign on behalf of Kamala Harris. More than 100 showed their support to the politician, and so the Trump campaign filed a complaint with the American election regulator, the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
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.
