“The Brits are Coming!” screamed the headline of the Trump campaign’s press release. It turned out to be the most moderate part of it. An absolute masterclass in hyperbole followed. Accusations of “illegal foreign assistance” and “anti-American election interference”, a parallel to the 243rd anniversary last week of the surrender of British forces at Yorktown, and everything topped off with the ominous historical warning: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.” To blame for all of it? “The far-Left Labour Party”.
Within minutes of the press release dropping, the LinkedIn post from Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, that started it all — asking for 10 volunteers to campaign for Kamala Harris in North Carolina — had exploded into a full-blown diplomatic incident and a major new headache for Sir Keir Starmer.
Except, it wasn’t one at all, actually. Downing Street can stop losing sleep over it, and — quietly — probably have already. But it does help to be on this side of the Atlantic to see why.
American election campaigns are different to ours, and it takes a little time here to really appreciate that. The theatrical is all. UK elections have their fair share of Punch and Judy, but still retain at least half their focus on policy. In the US, policy discussion — by candidates or the media — occupies 20 per cent of the bandwidth. In the land of the performative, what everyone chases is sentiment.
That’s why we Brits can make the mistake of taking presidential candidates too literally. Americans don’t. Which is why, if you ask the significant majority of the 48 per cent of Americans already voting for Trump (and I must have spoken to hundreds) they’ll tell you he won’t do half the things he says he will, and that’s just fine by them.
The Trump campaign’s surprise assault did play to a truism though. There has never been any love lost between Keir Starmer’s party and Maga, because they’ve always been ideological opposites and always will be.
No love lost
London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s feud with Trump has lasted a decade. Now-Foreign Secretary David Lammy squirms to remember that, in 2018, he branded Trump “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. The former president’s VP pick JD Vance was only too happy to reciprocate in July when he declared that “the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon” was “actually the UK, since Labour just took over”.
Has the conveyor belt of Starmer apparatchiks crossing the Atlantic to support team Harris over the summer helped the relationship? Of course not, but it hasn’t damaged it much either because there was never much to damage. What the UK media coverage of the Trump campaign’s attack didn’t fathom was its real intended victim. Not Labour or Starmer, but Harris herself. She, the Trumpers said, was the weak and perfidious one for inviting in the stinking Brits. They’re just stinking Brits.
It’s why the story got minimal pick-up in the US media. It wasn’t covered by any of the three big cable news networks that I saw (as an obsessive I constantly flick between all three), and it only appeared briefly in the morning political memos towards the end.
Why should it? The attack on Labour was one of four or five hyperbolic assaults that the Trump campaign fires off at Harris every day, and the Harris campaign reciprocates with the same hyperbole and frequency.
To the most important charge, does it mean the special relationship is doomed if Trump wins, which he is the narrow favourite to now do? Again no, not at all. Look at the evidence. Trump himself hasn’t mentioned the story once. Not in any of his rallies, and he does up to three a day, during which he regularly deviates from his teleprompter script to rant about whatever major or minor issue is aerating him that day.
Nor not once on his Truth Social or Twitter/X accounts, which are an even better barometer of his daily mood. And he really does rant about pretty much anything there, and sometimes past 1am. Yesterday’s examples included Fox News inviting on pro-Harris voices and the openly gay CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, whom Trump calls “Allison Cooper”.
Britain’s secret weapon
My guess is if Trump has even heard the Labour story, he has just as quickly forgotten it. Why? Trump has long had a love affair with Britain, spawned originally by his Scottish-born mother Mary. He has two golf courses in Scotland and is building a third. He wants the UK to love him back and has freely admitted as much, so open warfare with its leaders is not his bag.
He also quite likes Starmer, telling a recent press conference, “I actually think he’s very nice”, and that “he ran a great race” and “he’s popular”. For all his wobbles in power, Starmer still has a huge majority and Trump likes to be associated with winners.
The Starmer operation has also done a masterful job in seducing Trump. Much of the credit for that is due to Britain’s current ambassador to Washington, Dame Karen Pierce. The ebullient 65-year-old is a brilliant Trump whisperer, and came up with the genius ploy of Starmer calling Trump after the assassination attempt that almost killed him in July. The PM was one of the very few world leaders to do so. As Trump has subsequently admitted, the shooting was a big deal for him psychologically and it’s a gesture he hasn’t forgotten.
It all resulted in red-carpet treatment when the PM was in town for the UN General Assembly in September — a rare two hour-long dinner with the former president in Trump Tower. Guess who else was invited? David “he’s a neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” Lammy.
Pierce’s four-year posting has already been extended by a year, and she is due home in early 2025. My advice to No 10 if Trump wins? Don’t replace her with a Peter Mandelson or David Miliband, who will sooner or later succumb to moralising. Pick another silky-smooth, professional diplomatic fluffer.
Better still, offer Pierce all the gold in Trump Tower to stay on.
Tom Newton Dunn is a broadcaster and political journalist
