Gap-year Keir is toying with Britain and America’s special relationship

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during a bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping of China
Starmer’s bid to cooperate with China will strain the special relationship with Washington under Trump - Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire

No stranger to jibes about his character and appearance, Boris Johnson used to take great delight in coming up with ways to tease Sir Keir Starmer at the despatch box.

When it comes to unconvincing premierships, “Bojo the Clown” is right up there with “Lettuce Liz” but Britain has him alone to thank for some classic put-downs of the Labour leader, chief among them “Sir Beer Korma” and “Captain Hindsight”.

It is a measure of Starmer’s wretched first few months in office, however, that the Prime Minister now has more unflattering nicknames than some of his predecessors managed during an entire term.

Someone dubbed “Two-tier Kier” and “Free Gear Keir” will no doubt be wishing his name was less rhythmic. Failing a legal change, perhaps a man who insists he genuinely wants to make the world a more equal place could practise what he preaches.

No wonder he is picking up unflattering monikers when he accepts a jaw-dropping £100,000 in freebies from donors since 2019 – more than any other recent British leader.

Equally, Starmer can have no complaints if “Gap-year Keir” soon finds its way into the Westminster lexicon as he jets off on yet another tax-payer funded trip around the world – his 15th since July.

Earlier this month, the Prime Minister declared pompously: “The question is what am I spending my time doing, not where I am”. It’s a neat soundbite but sadly for Starmer it just adds to the impression of a politician who is constantly blowing hot air.

If the Prime Minister carries on like this, he’ll soon succeed in making the exploits of Judith Chalmers look positively restrained. Unfortunately, “Wish you were Keir” doesn’t have quite the same appeal.

After all, who wants to see Britain embarrass itself on the world stage?

At least part of Starmer’s trip to the G20 summit in Brazil was spent kowtowing to China, a country that represents a direct and constant threat to the UK’s national interests, and those of our closest allies.

As Alicia Kearns, Tory security spokesman and China critic, has pointed out, Starmer surrenders the right to be taken seriously on matters of diplomacy when, on the one hand he says the West must redouble its efforts in Ukraine, while on the other having a cosy fire-side chat with the leader of a country that has been arming Russia.

Meanwhile, whatever happened to Starmer the great human rights advocate, who once declared that it was “shameful that the Government plans to reward countries who commit human rights abuses with trade deals”?

Ditto, whatever became of the principled MP who backed a Commons motion in 2021 calling for China’s persecution of the Uyghur community to be formally branded as “genocide”? Labour has been eerily silent on such issues since the election.

With all the talk of the need for a “pragmatic relationship” and “serious engagement” with Beijing, Starmer’s clumsy attempts at rapprochement risk coming back to bite him in a manner reminiscent of George Osborne’s dreadfully naive “golden era” of Sino-British relations.

Osborne’s approach was built on the arrogant assumption that we could get the Chinese to be more like us, but China’s world view is utterly alien to us and Beijing will never compromise on that. Instead, China ruthlessly uses Western countries they think they can get close to, then exploits those ties at the first opportunity.

If Starmer wants a model for how it can all go spectacularly wrong, he needs look no further than Berlin. Germany spent decades forging close trade relations with China, only to now find its car market decimated by a flood of cheap Chinese imports.

Yet, even now, Germany has broken ranks with fellow EU member states to vote against a European motion to impose heavy tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, such is the extent to which fortunes of the German economy are hitched to China’s.

So an official communique from No 10 revealing that Starmer and Xi “discussed deepening the partnership bilaterally on trade and investment, health, education and other areas of mutual interest” really should be of grave concern.

Instead of grandstanding on the world stage, Starmer’s time would be far better spent trying to negotiate a free trade deal with America behind closed doors.

In case the Prime Minister hasn’t noticed, there is a very real risk that Britain gets caught up in Donald Trump’s new trade war – a conflict that threatens to be far more damaging to the global economy than its first iteration based on the terrifying figures coming out of Washington.

In what risks being the understatement of the year, the Centre for Economics and Business Research states that Trump’s plan to slap 60pc levies on Chinese products sold to American businesses, as well as 20pc tariffs on imports from all other countries, “pose challenges” for Starmer’s Government. Such measures could knock almost 1pc off the size of the UK economy – equivalent to a £20bn hit – it estimates.

At the same time, Starmer also needs to recognise that there’s far more at stake than just the terms that Britain and America trade with each other on. Though that is a big part of what defines the two countries’ deep ties, any attempts at making friends with Xi risk jeopardising the so-called special relationship, such is Trump’s contempt for Beijing.

Can, for example, the Cabinet rely on the same degree of vital intelligence sharing with the incoming US administration if Starmer foolishly falls into the same trap as Osborne of believing China can be a trusted ally?

If Gap-year Keir was half the canny statesman he purports to be, the Prime Minister would be going to great lengths to ensure that his next overseas trip was to Florida for a weekend of golf at Mar-a-Lago with the president-elect.