So much for the Special Relationship. Since Donald Trump took office in January, Brits have been taking quite a tongue-lashing from the US president’s team.
Keir Starmer, who touches down in Washington on Thursday to meet Trump, has been nicknamed “two-tier Keir” by the president’s consigliere Elon Musk over his handling of grooming gangs. JD Vance, the vice president, also seems to have it in for Brits: Vance has mocked Rory Stewart (not something we need help with but thanks anyway, Veep); ‘The problem with Rory and people like him,’ wrote Vance, ‘is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130’.
Vance spluttered with incredulity at Niall Ferguson
Vance spluttered with incredulity at Niall Ferguson, accusing the Scottish-born historian of espousing ‘moralistic garbage’. He has also taken a pop at Shashank Joshi, defence editor of the Economist: ‘Behind the tough guy language,’ he responded to Joshi on X, ‘there is no argument here.’
Trump himself seems less interested in us this time around; we have lost the glitz of the Queen after all. Although the Donald is, hilariously, being polite and friendly about Starmer ahead of his rendezvous in the White House: ‘He’s a nice guy,’ he has said of Starmer, somewhat bafflingly. This remark is so unusual in its cloudiness that it suggests Starmer doesn’t matter enough for Trump to register or even to remember. I imagine Trump has the same issue with Starmer that we Brits had when he first seeped on to the political scene in the mid-2010s; of a grey smear emitting a funny noise somewhere close by, a vague odour of photocopying fluid and office carpet lint – but a smell that doesn’t seem that important and can probably safely be ignored.
But why is Vance in particular going after Brits? I suspect it’s because of an interesting difference in British and American social manners. The tone of Stewart, Joshi and Ferguson in the particular posts that yanked Vance’s chain – a kind of head shaking ‘Where will it all end?’ pompous condescension – was a red rag waved in Vance’s boviform face. That tone makes me, here in Britain, stamp my hooves until I’m choking on the dust. For hillbilly Vance, with atavistic memories of Boston Tea Parties, midnight rides, Lexington and crossing the Delaware, it must be enraging.
A recent survey by Opinium used blind polling to test out Trump policies on British voters. The unsuspecting limeys were not told that these were Orange Man plans. Stripped of his imprint, they were much more popular. Even a majority of 2024 Labour voters plumped for declaring a border emergency.
As ever, it seems one of our big issues in Britain, no matter how the country has changed in recent decades, is that things must be said in the correct tone. The brashness and sheer vulgarity of Trump, Vance and Musk are, for many British people, inexcusable.
This is maybe partly why Britain, and the rest of Europe for that matter, has ended up with a succession of dud governments. We have rolled over, while absolutely insane policies – on gender to the Chagos Islands – far madder than anything Trump has ever come out with, were enacted. We said nothing, because it was all conducted ‘properly’, in the right way. We live in serious times requiring urgent action. But urgency frightens us. We still cling to our politesse and process.
Just look at the terms used by British politicians for their big ideas over the last decade or so: ‘The Big Society’; ‘Levelling up’; ‘Fixing the foundations’. Starmer is now waffling about laying himself down like a bridge over troubled water or something. All of these are passive-sounding, slow-but-sure, and so abstract they are impossible to pin down. Compare these to Trump, Vance and Musk, who tell voters: We will do THIS. We will do THAT. And we will do it NOW.
The British attitude – and I put my hand up, I suffer from this too – is that people doing things is bad enough, but people doing things rudely, or – horror of horrors! – quickly, is beyond endurance.
We need to get over these qualms, and drop our squeamishness. Decorum is for duffers in the twenty-first century. Our message to politicians should be that we no longer care about their tone, but what they actually do. That we don’t care if they are grey or eccentric, remote or giggly, serene or sweaty. We just want them to be competent and to do things, fast. Is that really too much to ask?
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