The British prime minister is embroiled in a public fight with Donald Trump over military action in Iran which reached a new low Tuesday, as Trump said the man he once hailed as a “very good person” is “not Winston Churchill,” News.Az reports, citing Politico.
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Starmer might not have chosen his confrontation with the U.S. leader, but the timing — in the wake of a hefty by-election defeat for his struggling government from a left-wing challenger — carries some upsides for him.
Namely, it appears to have delivered a rare moment in which Starmer’s own beliefs are in sync with large sections of his party and the public.A former British government official, granted anonymity like others in this article to speak candidly, said: “There was always going to be a moment of rupture [with Trump], and this is it.”
Starmer has poured time and resources into cultivating a strong relationship with Trump, inviting him to the U.K. for a second lavish state visit and putting aside major ideological differences to work with a key British ally.
But this week has been marked by the biggest deterioration in relations between Washington and London since Trump re-entered the White House. Britain’s initial refusal to allow the use of U.S. airbases for strikes in Iran saw the president complain to a British newspaper that it took Starmer “far too long” to reach an eventual decision to partially change course.
Starmer then told MPs in the House of Commons Tuesday that he “does not believe in regime change from the skies” — and insisted his party had learned lessons from the Iraq War that saw Tony Blair repeatedly attacked for his closeness to Washington.
The president deepened the rift Tuesday, in a sign this row has some way to go. Appearing alongside Friedrich Merz in the White House, Trump attacked Starmer’s deal to hand sovereignty of the strategically-important Chagos Islands to Mauritius and told reporters: “This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with.”
