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It is hard to imagine a politician less like Donald Trump than Keir Starmer. A lawyer and bureaucrat by trade, the Prime Minister has made much over the years of his “cool-headed” approach to politics.
Nowhere has this tendency been more obvious than during the current global trade war being waged by the US President.
Refusing to openly criticise, or even mention, Trump by name, Starmer has refused to engage in what the Health Secretary Wes Streeting referred to on Tuesday as “placard waving” during this crisis.
Yet at the same time as rejecting Trump’s bombastic approach to global diplomacy, Starmer’s Government has also sought to embrace some of the President’s own anti-globalist rhetoric.
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After the Business Secretary insisted on Sunday that the era of globalisation was now “over”, Starmer gave a speech on Monday in which he also insisted that the UK must now “back British brilliance” instead.
Speaking at a Jaguar Land Rover’s factory in Birmingham, Starmer said that his aim was to provide “British cars for British workers”.
This slogan is uneasily reminiscent of the “British jobs for British workers” slogan first used by the far-right National Front and BNP, before later being controversially appropriated by former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown in 2007.
Yet if Brown’s use of the phrase felt out of character, Starmer’s use of a somewhat modified version of it felt doubly so.
Just like his other recent attempts to mimic the far-right rhetoric of “open borders” there is something deeply off-putting about this most un-Trumpian of politicians attempting to cosplay as a Trump-style politician.
The rhetoric is reportedly part of an attempt by the Prime Minister to find a “third way” between the anti-globalist rhetoric of Trump and globalist embrace of Blair-era Labour.
However, as well as feeling uncomfortable, such dual-horse riding by the Prime Minister also feels deeply dishonest. Because for all the talk of backing British, both Starmer and his ministers are also refusing to back any calls to either boycott US goods, or to focus on buying British products instead.
Asked on Tuesday whether she would support a ‘Buy British’ campaign, the Chancellor Rachel Reeves told MPs that she would not, as it would make us “inward looking”.
“If every country in the world decided they only wanted to buy things produced in their country, that’s not a good way forward,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Prime Minister reiterated this point, insisting that the UK must remain an “open trading nation”.
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So while on the one hand Keir Starmer is insisting he wants to “back British brilliance” and provide “British cars for British workers” he is also explicitly rejecting doing anything to actually deliver on that rhetoric.
This conflict is particularly apparent in the Prime Minister’s response to Trump.
Because while his refusal to ever publicly criticise the President may well turn out to be a wise decision, albeit not one that has borne much fruit for the UK so far, it is also at complete odds with the Prime Minister’s concurrent attempts to pose as a flag-waving patriotic politician who will stand up for his country at any cost.
By seeking to embrace the patriotic rhetoric of Trump, while refusing to so much as whisper a bad word about the man threatening to push the UK into recession, Starmer ends up looking weak at exactly the moment when he is trying to project strength.
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It is this conflict between Starmer’s natural cool-headed character and the Trump-style rhetoric he has been persuaded to adopt by his advisers, which shows why the ‘family, faith and flag’ politics of the ‘Blue Labour’ wing of his party, is such a dead end for the Prime Minister and his Government.
To put it simply, Starmer can either claim to be the cool-headed pragmatist seeking to calmly steer Britain through stormy waters, or a Trump-style populist urging us to buy British cars for British workers.
One of these options is believable, the other is not. Attempting to pull off both at the same time risks looking ridiculous.