The countdown is on, with just days left until the result of the US presidential election is announced. With pollsters across the world undecided about the likely outcome, Sir Keir’s Starmer’s government is trying to hedge its bets. Health Secretary Wes Streeting has insisted on the airwaves today that ‘there will be a really good working relationship’ between the Labour lot and Donald Trump if the former president emerges victorious – despite hordes of Labour volunteers travelling stateside to canvas for Kamala.
But is there too much water under the bridge to repair relations? Reform leader and Trump ally Nigel Farage said last month it was ‘ludicrous’ for Starmer’s army to ‘get the relationship off to a bad start’ with Trump after the presidential hopeful accused Sir Keir’s party of ‘election interference’ over the volunteer palaver. And it’s not like the Starmtroopers have been all that complimentary about the Republican candidate in the past. In that vein, Mr S has trawled through the archives to remind readers just how scathing Labour’s attacks on the ex-president have been…
David Lammy
The UK Foreign Secretary has quite the history of hitting out at Trump, with many of his old tweets coming back to bite him. Back in 2018, the Labour politician blasted the then-president as being a ‘neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath’ in a Time magazine op-ed. In the piece, published ahead of Trump’s first presidential trip to the UK, the Labour MP promised he would be among the ‘tens of thousands on the streets, protesting against our government’s capitulation to this tyrant in a toupee’, adding that the Republican was a ‘dangerous clown’ and a ‘profound threat to the international order’. Charming!
Wes Streeting
Despite his assertion today that Labour will ‘be able to work effectively [with a Trump administration] as partners and and as allies’, Streeting is no stranger to slamming the presidential hopeful. Back in 2017, the now-Health Secretary took to Twitter to lambast the then-president, writing acerbically: ‘Trump is such an odious, sad, little man. Imagine being proud to have that as your president.’ This may not age as well as Streeting might have hoped…
Sadiq Khan
In yet another attempt at relevance, the London mayor also waded into the conversation with an attack on Trump earlier this year. Speaking to Politico, the lefty politician denounced the presidential hopeful as ‘a racist. He’s a sexist. He’s a homophobe.’ Going on, Khan urged his colleagues to ‘call him out’, adding: ‘I worry about a Donald Trump presidency.’ It’s not the first time that the London mayor has locked horns with the Republican candidate, however. Back in 2019, the US businessman described Khan as a ‘stone cold loser’ and ‘very dumb’. Ouch.
Ed Miliband
The former Labour leader-turned-eco-zealot may be more than a little worried about the prospect of a Trump presidency – and exactly what it might mean for the transition to net zero. Last year the Republican candidate praised then-prime minister Rishi Sunak after he chose to water down his climate pledges (on the sale of gas and diesel cars as well as gas boilers). Trump called Sunak’s decision ‘smart’, before going on to insist the climate crisis is a ‘green new hoax’. In 2021, Miliband blasted the former US president’s administration as ‘four years of Trump acting as a roadblock to progress’. But that’s not the worst of it. Back in 2016, Miliband attacked UK politicians who said Trump’s win was good for Britain – branding the idea a ‘delusional fantasy’. Going on, the eco-activist raged: ‘The idea that we have shared values with a racist, misogynistic self-confessed groper beggars belief.’ Good heavens!
Angela Rayner
The Deputy Prime Minister has not been particularly effusive about the Republican candidate in the past either. Taking to Twitter after Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Rayner wrote: ‘I am so happy to see the back of Donald Trump’, adding: ‘but even more so to see Kamala Harris as Vice President.’ It followed the Labour politician’s furious post on the day of the Capitol Hill riots, in which the now-DPM blasted Trump’s ‘lies after the election’ and condemned ‘the violence Donald Trump has unleashed’ as ‘terrifying’. Back in 2020, after the US election, Rayner applauded ‘all the activists and organisers across the USA who worked day and night [and] fought Trump’s voter suppression’. Whether she will be able to tweet similar sentiments this year is quite another matter…
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