“This has been very badly received across the UK.” Keir Starmer was doing his best to make the collapse of the post-war international order sound dull. It is a job for which he is uniquely well equipped. The prime minister could make the start of nuclear war sound like an announcement that the rail replacement bus service has been cancelled. He might yet get the chance to try.
For the benefit of the future historian trying to piece 2026 together from fragments of satire, the specific subject this Monday morning was Donald Trump’s announcement that he was imposing escalating tariffs on all of Europe, and possibly the entire solar system, until we give in and acknowledge him as God Emperor of Greenland. Trump is now in the “making his horse a senator” stage of his presidency, and it turns out that the US constitutional checks and balances about which we’ve all heard so much relied too heavily on there being people in Washington with spines.
On Monday morning we’d learned that Trump had written to Norway’s prime minister, complaining that his troubled ego had not been soothed with sufficient fawning admiration. “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace,” the actual president really actually wrote in an actual message that was actually sent, apparently without anyone at any point uttering the words “25th Amendment”.
Starmer’s approach to all this is, as ever, to try to de-escalate. “The right way to approach an issue of this seriousness is through calm discussion between allies,” he intoned, like a human flame suppressant. The problem is that as Trump gets ever more, well, demented, trying to calm him down with appeals to reason is like running up to the Towering Inferno waving a fire blanket.
Sitting in the audience at the prime minister’s press conference, Yvette Cooper looked like she hadn’t slept all weekend, which she may not have done. Foreign Secretary is supposed to be a fun job, but poor Cooper got it just as it became a 24/7 nightmare.
One sliver of comfort for the government is that much of the opposition has no idea how to respond either. Ed Davey of the Lib Dems wanted the King to cancel his forthcoming trip to the US. Zack Polanski wants US troops out of Britain and Britain out of NATO, but then the Greens have pretty much always wanted both these things. But Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage both offered Starmer their support.
The Reform leader did this standing next to his newest defector from the Conservatives, Andrew Rosindell. The usual joke when a Tory joins Reform is that the quality of both parties is improved. Rosindell, who as been in parliament for 25 years and still isn’t considered a “grandee”, might be the exception to that rule, at least from Reform’s perspective. Certainly, Farage seemed faintly embarrassed by his newest recruit, wheeling him out not in the usual press conference, but in a quick tour before the cameras with limited questions.
Back with weightier matters, at his press conference the prime minister was struggling to rise to the occasion. “Let me say why all of this matters so directly to people here at home,” he said. Is it because we might die in a nuclear inferno as a result of America being led by a man who has been fooled by the Mercator projection into believing that Greenland is the same size as Russia? No, as it turns out.
“When war drives up fuel prices, it is households who feel it first,” the prime minister explained. Which is true, but a bit like explaining that when your house burns down, you won’t be able to find your cufflinks.
“We’ve taken action to reduce energy bills, to freeze rail and prescription charges,” Starmer went on, which will be a tremendous comfort if the collapse of NATO emboldens Russia to march into more bits of Europe.
Is the prime minister trying to take the temperature out of the issue, is he trying not to alarm the public, or does he simply not believe any of this can be real? Anyone hoping that common sense will prevail in Washington would do well to look at what American politicians are willing to see happen to other Americans. If they’re not going to stop Trump sending troops to Minnesota, why would they intervene to prevent him attacking a place many of them would struggle to find on a map?
It seems ridiculous to talk about the US invading Danish territory because the president is angry with Norway that he didn’t get a Nobel prize. Surely Trump can’t mean that! He would have to be crazy to mean that. And yet.
