‘Wes who?’: What Washington insiders think about Labour’s warring leaders

Sir Keir Starmer has become Britain’s Joe Biden in the eyes of Donald Trump, according to a Maga insider who worked for US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Matt Terrill, chief of staff for Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, told The i Paper that “history will repeat itself” for the Prime Minister, meaning he will lose the next general election just like Biden did in the US vote in 2024.

“I think Starmer has the signs of being the Joe Biden of the UK,” he said. “Like Biden, Starmer is facing a lot of pressure from members of his own party. They’re all trying to save their own political careers.”

According to Terrill, Starmer’s successor can survive by taking the President’s advice and embracing a “UK First” agenda, opening up the North Sea for drilling and clamping down on illegal migration.

But British pollster and analyst Patrick Basham warned that Labour’s cabinet is so unknown in the US that Trump will have to “Google who Wes Streeting is” if the Prime Minister quits and the former health secretary enters the leadership race. Former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner would be dubbed the “British AOC”, he said, referring to the firebrand left-wing Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The White House might feel “most hopeful” about Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, Basham suggested, “because he seems to have a bit more about him, more of a marketer, personally and professionally”.

“If it was Burnham, he and Trump might get on quicker and better than the other potential prime ministers. They wouldn’t view him as tied to Starmer’s regime and tainted by it.”

These sobering assessments came as Starmer clings on to power after dozens of MPs called on him to step down following the local council elections, in which Labour lost more than a thousand seats. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party gained more than 1,400 seats in what Labour MPs fear could be a preview of the next general election, which is due to take place in 2029.

Terrill, a former managing partner of Washington PR agency Firehouse Strategies, saw a clear parallel between Starmer and Biden, the former president who was forced to end his re-election campaign by his own Democratic Party amid concerns about his age.

Terrill said: “It’s very interesting, the similarities between what’s happening with Starmer now and Biden in 2024. The similarities lead you to believe history will repeat itself, with Reform outperforming, just as Trump was able to do with Democratic voters in 2024.

“When you’re at the top of the ticket, polling numbers aren’t great and members of your own political party have expressed grave concern, that’s not a good place to be.”

Terrill said that Trump had been “very transparent” about his views regarding Starmer, mocking him in a White House speech for refusing to send British warships to the Strait of Hormuz to assist with the Iran crisis. Starmer’s lack of support for America was a “disappointment” for the Trump administration, given that the UK and US have been allies for decades, he added.

He said: “The President gave the Prime Minister some advice if he wants to survive and that was to focus on the issues that people care about: energy costs and immigration, particularly as it related to illegal immigration.

“Through President Trump’s lens, he recognises that was a huge deal in his own reelection in 2024.

“Those issues were front and centre in 2024 in the US and are front and centre in the UK now. That’s what’s driving the Prime Minister’s polling numbers down.”

Should Starmer go, any successor will essentially have to start from scratch with the White House because so few of them are known in Washington, said Basham. If Streeting became the new Prime Minister, there would be “a lot of Googling” in the White House to figure out who he is. “They would have to Google who he is,” Basham said. “They would probably conclude he is a technocratic Macron Blairite kind of person and hope he’s somebody they could work with,” he said.

While Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has developed a friendship with Vice-President JD Vance, his past comments, including calling Trump a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” in 2018 when he was a backbench MP, would count against him in Washington, Basham said.

Lammy has insisted there is “no contest” for the Labour leadership and it is “business as usual” at Downing Street.

Ben Judah, an associate fellow at Chatham House who visited Washington while working as a special adviser to Lammy, told The i Paper that Labour lacked any political heavyweights.

He said: “Starmer’s challengers have no foreign policy experience, no geopolitical world-views, no foreign affairs teams and no experience in explaining our place in the world and its tumult to the public.

“But if they succeed, that will be half their job.”

Andrew Hale, a fellow for International Relations at Advancing American Freedom, a Trump-aligned think-tank in Washington, said that for the Trump administration, there is “nobody in the wings” in the UK Government, and they would ideally like to see Farage as prime minister.

He said the White House was already “looking toward the future” and the general election.

المصدر: iNews