Already a veritable industry has sprung up advising Keir Starmer how his government might cultivate the second coming of Donald Trump. Should he pivot toward America, get the trade deal signed, and attempt to mitigate the White House's dysfunctions and excesses through the offices of the special relationship? Should the Prime Minister seek instead a closer relationship with the EU, considering the tariffs Trump has vowed to impose on imported goods to tackle inflation helped win him the election. Or should Number 10 try both these things at once, as the Bank's former chief wonk Andy Haldane counsels? Wherever Starmer steers to tread, he has something else to contend with: the yapping of the Tories and the other runts of the right.
Despite suffering their worst result ever, what should have felt like a cataclysm has been received by the Tories as a slap on the wrist by the electorate. They were buoyed up by the fact Labour's popular vote was far from spectacular, and have convinced themselves that to win again they have to turn right and scoop up the support lost to Reform while watching Labour combust in government. The consequences of which will take care of the rest. But one way Labour's immolation might be sped up is by the Tories stirring mischief and trying to cultivate difficulties for Starmer vis a vis the White House.
Not content with destroying Twitter, for some time now Elon Musk has criticised Starmer and Labour. For instance, inside the last month he's said Rachel Reeves's closure of the agricultural land tax loophole is "wrong", and of the investigation into the Telegraph's Allison Pearson over an alleged racist tweet said "This is insane. Make Orwell Fiction Again!!”. Obviously ignorant that the probe is under the direction of social media legislation drafted and implemented by the Tories. Nevertheless, this presents them with an opportunity: lever Trump into opposing UK government policy to undermine its credibility and room for manoeuvre at home and abroad.
An example is the "debate" about the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands. In the summer, the government announced it was formally handing the islands over to Mauritius. The United States would sign a further lease with them on Diego Garcia for its strategically useful air base. In other words, to all intents and purposes nothing changes. The Tories, however, are opposed to the transfer despite negotiating it in the first place. And so, the Telegraph reports, Tory peers are looking at blocking it in the Lords so Trump can come in and veto the decision, thereby thwarting China's schemes for the region - apparently. The real reason is to put Starmer at loggerheads with Trump and force a humiliating climb down that the Tories would politically profit from.
This is how it's going to be for the next four years. For all the froth about "sovereignty" that underpinned the "long-held" and "genuinely felt" principles behind Brexit, and the denunciations of "foreign courts" and the European Convention during the Tory leadership contest, this goes out of the window for the Tories and their cultivation of Trump. Yes it's hypocritical and, in conservatism's own terms, arguably anti-British if not treasonous. But this isn't because of ideology, of a congruence of ideas between the Tories here and the extremism of Trump's Republicans. More important is the perceived commonality of interests.
Trump is set on shredding the federal state for the profit of America's oligarchs, and his appointments - as irrational and as crazy as they appear - reflect this ambition. The sum total of all "small state" politics is the same: run down state capacity in everything but law and order and the military, force people to provide for themselves if they can or somehow survive if they cannot, and the horizon of politics is levelled down. Why demand anything from the state if it simply cannot deliver what meagre social responsibilities it has left? This was Rishi Sunak's project, and is now Trump's. Though this being the USA everything has to be bigger. While Labour with Reeves in Number 11 is never going to nationalise the top 100 monopolies nor, for that matter, break with business-centric politics, for the Tories her taxation of unearned income is a step too far. It's not that the people the Tories represent can't afford it, they fret that any measure, no matter how modest, that touches the core of class relations in British capitalism can only lead to more demands. If capital gains tax is increased now, what's to stop if from going up tomorrow? And having implemented one set of tax rises, what's going to stop Labour from introducing more aimed at property, share income, rentals etc. in the future? That way, they fear, lies a shift in the balance of forces that the Tories have done so much to right after the shocks of Brexit, Corbynism, and Covid.
Let's not over egg the pudding. Most of business are broadly supportive of Starmer's modernisation project. But the rump Tory party, the most conscious, far-sighted, but paranoid section of their class worry that Labour might uncork all manner of genies with political consequences that will echo down the years. That's why this government has to be brought to heel. If that means constantly sucking up to and petitioning Trump and his allies to do Britain down, put pressure on diluting or abandoning the mildest of social democratic policies, and showing up this country's claims to sovereignty as a joke, this is what they will do. The national interest, their national interest demands no less.
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