We’re now a few weeks into Donald Trump’s latest assault on our attention span and we can surely understand the process by now. He says something dreadful and then we all freak out about it. Occasionally something happens. Most of the time it doesn’t. But by then we barely notice because he’s said something else dreadful and the whole godforsaken cycle begins again.
Keir Starmer will have spent the evening trying to formulate a response. On the one hand, he must try to avoid alienating Trump and precipitating a tariff attack. The Government is just about within its own fiscal rules. Any detonation of its US trading relationship will plunge it into chaos. But at the same time, he cannot just hand Palestinians over to the wolves.
Over dinner yesterday, Starmer met Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, which almost certainly centred on what they were going to do about Trump’s imperialist threats against Greenland. Again, Starmer is stuck. He cannot condemn Trump or he leaves himself exposed. But he cannot allow these matters to proceed, because it destroys international law.
Will any of this happen? Will we really see American troops launch an amphibious assault on the Gaza Strip and start shooting at people? Will we see an invasion fleet launch for Greenland?
We are all caught in this vortex of this nonsense. Big loud colourful horror stories we can’t help but pay attention to but which add up to nothing. It was like this during the first Trump term. It remains the same now.
The first priority is to set up mechanisms for the things he wants to do at home and make sure they are insulated against distraction. Downing Street must be working with relevant government departments on his core aims – the NHS, the economy, education – in a way that is completely closed off from the geopolitical firestorm, in a manner which cannot be blown off course by day-to-day madness.
But what is the outcome if Starmer comments on everything that Trump says? First, he triggers a tariff war against himself. Second, his own time as Prime Minister becomes entirely defined by whatever is happening in the White House. He loses the ability to set his own agenda, to talk about his own issues. He becomes just another amplifier in the Trump chaos circus.
Who knows? Perhaps no decision will ever have to be made. Perhaps Trump will forget about a UK-US trade deal. Perhaps he will never do anything about Greenland. Perhaps his absent-minded thoughts about Gaza will never be realised. If so, Starmer will have avoided a trap.
Brexit cheerleaders have gone awfully quiet – so let me remind you what they did to Britain
Read MoreTrump is madness. You can see quite clearly that his mind is in chaos and that this chaos is being projected onto the world. He is an animal in a cage, prone to sudden bouts of violence. The world leaders who deal with him look like Thomas Cromwell negotiating with Henry VIII – hoping they can manage him, knowing they might fail, and wary all the time of what he might do to them if they do.
Despite all the noise, the issue is primarily one of management. So far, Starmer has proved highly effective at this. It is not inspiring. Of course it isn’t. But it is probably the only viable avenue open to him. How long he can keep this approach up is another matter.
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