Playing the Supplicant

Every time Donald Trump commits an outrage, he causes a comms nightmare for Downing Street. Keir Starmer cannot and will not ever risk publicly criticising the US president, never mind condemn his criminality. But even he's enough of a politician to realise that The Donald is less popular with the British public than he, and so backing Trump openly makes the chance of a polling come back even less likely. As such, Labour finds itself repeatedly in a horrible no-man's land. Starmer not only confirmed that the UK had no part in kidnapping Maduro, but that he hoped" to "have a phone call" with Trump to talk about it. "We need to establish all the facts", he said. Taking this as the cue, the always-annoying Darren Jones toured to TV studios to push the new improbable line. I.e. We care about the "international rules-based order", but it's not a government's job to pronounce on breaches of it. That's what the courts are for. The charges of hypocrisy almost write themselves.

Having lost their chief Trump whisperer to disgrace, nothing can be done to jeopardise cordial relations with the White House. In an uncharacteristic moment of honesty, the Prime Minister spelled it out on Sunday morning. That is the special relationship is maintaining Britain's status as Washington's favourite supplicant. The intelligence apparatus and the military are so thoroughly integrated into US operational command that, to all intents and purposes, the British state does not have sovereignty over deploying its forces. It always has to "inform", or to be accurate, ask the Pentagon for permission before taking action. Funny how the right in this country have never complained about this infringement of our independence.

Sundry liberals got a bit excited early in 2025 after Trump's initial bouts of rudeness. European governments realised that America was an unreliable ally and EU/NATO countries would have to look to themselves to fend off Russian subversion and aggression. This slice of cringe did numbers on social media as there was talk of "going alone" and positioning a nascent European superpower as the real bastion of liberty. But there were practical questions of collective security and these apply to Britain as well. Starmer's trumpeting of increases in military spending is a crowd pleaser to the Stop Russia Now sliver of elite opinion and allows them to believe Britain is heading in the same direction as the rest of Europe, but this is not so. There is nothing in the government's actions or comms to suggest they're looking at even slightly untangling themselves from the US "partnership".

The dominant section of the British ruling class - the commercial and financial capital of the City - is also closely intertwined with its US counterparts, and a plurality have long hitched their interests to the US as the guarantor for open markets around the world. It was therefore no surprise, considering his proximity to these parts of the British establishment, that Nigel Farage said "The American actions in Venezuela overnight are unorthodox and contrary to international law — but if they make China and Russia think twice, it may be a good thing. I hope the Venezuelan people can now turn a new leaf without Maduro." And, as we've seen, where the right goes Labour follows. Supplication and slavishness to the US is embedded in UK bourgeois culture, and that finds an echo in the common sense of "Atlanticism" in the Labour Party. And there are no crimes even the most extreme, reckless, and right wing American president in history can commit that would cause our country to step away from its subordination to Washington

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