STEPHEN DAISLEY President made Starmer look small and shifty... he's like a new leader of the opposition

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are like one of those couples on a TV matchmaker competition who are so wildly incompatible you just know they'll end up going on the most awkward date ever.
And it was awkward, all right.
Nobbled by the hacks on the way into their press conference at Trump's golf course at Turnberry in Ayrshire, the prime minister might have been hoping his unlikely companion would wave off the questions and head inside. A quick off the record natter and down to business.
Like that was going to happen. This is Donald Trump. He is drawn to TV cameras like overmanned dinghies are drawn to Dover.
Naturally, the question was the last one Starmer wanted: immigration. He yapped pathetically about the deportations carried out since he came to power, while Trump steamrollered ahead with a lengthy jeremiad about how migrants had changed Europe.
'Europe is a much different place than it was five years, ten years ago,' he rambled. 'They've got to get their act together. If they don't, you're not going to have Europe anymore as you know it. You can't do that.'
Truly, this was a historic summit. The first presidential visit to be recorded as a non-crime hate incident.
Once inside, the prime minister and the president sat in tandem to field questions from the media.
The pairing was bizarre, the tension palpable, every second breathtaking. It's a wonder it wasn't blocked under the Online Safety Act.
Like all doomed couples, they couldn't see eye to eye on their friends.
'I'm not a fan of your mayor,' Trump opined to a reporter. 'I think he's done a terrible job. The mayor of London. He's a nasty person.'
Starmer's face fell like his poll numbers. With a nervous chuckle in his voice, he chirped: 'He's a friend of mine.'
Trump stared ahead, deadpan: 'No, he's done a terrible job — but I would still visit London.'
Starmer cringed. The only thing missing was the theme tune from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Mark Twain called golf 'a good walk spoiled', but he was talking out of his hole-in-one. This was pure entertainment. I still reckon a birdie is something in the sky and bogey the bloke in Casablanca, but if every golf club puts on a show like this, sign me up.
Every time Trump went on a verbal wander around his own thoughts, Starmer sat gape-mouthed, which was helpful since it gave the president somewhere to stick his foot every minute or so.
The prime minister looked almost relieved to take a question on farming and inheritance tax, no doubt assuming even Trump couldn't find a way to mess this up for him. Then the president began recounting how he had removed the estate tax from family farms, mindful that farmers like to keep their land in the family and noting the increased risks of suicide where they were not allowed to do so.
Starmer, whose government plans to whomp British farms with new death taxes, sat there in stoney silence.
Excruciating doesn't begin to cover it. I get secondary embarrassment very easily. The sight of someone else humiliated has my cheeks smouldering like volcanoes. It's just too agonising to watch. I bit through so many fingernails yesterday afternoon I skipped dinner entirely.
The lowest moment for Starmer came when a journalist asked: 'The president makes it look easy dealing with illegal migrants. You must be envious of his record in such a short period of time.'
Starmer squirmed like an eel in a well-tailored suit, acknowledging the issue and the importance of tackling it. Trump beamed in satisfaction. Finally, someone from the media who wasn't Fake News.
The discussion turned to internet censorship, as Trump learned that new powers would allow the nation to shut down his Truth Social network.
'I don't think he's going to censor my site because I only say nice things,' he insisted, turning to Starmer and pleading: 'Will you please uncensor my site?'
The prime minister explained, in a excitable word jumble, that there were no plans to suppress Truth Social and maintained the new laws were aimed at protecting children.
Asked if he could give Starmer any tips for beating Nigel Farage, Trump recommended tax cuts, cracking down on crime and curbing illegal immigration. Starmer was as impassive as a statue. All three were popular policies in Britain, but now if he did anyone of them he would be seen as taking Trump's advice.
The president then congratulated Starmer for 'becoming strong on immigration'. As if he didn't have enough problems with the parliamentary Labour party, now he'd have to explain why Bad Orange Man was bigging up his border policies. Every time Trump threw Starmer a rope it had a noose on the end.
Then we came to the wind mills. The president is famously not a fan. Probably intimidated by the only creations that generate more hot air than him.
'When we go to Aberdeen,' he mused, drifting off on a tangent, 'they have some of the ugliest windmills you've ever seen.' These 'ugly monsters', he told the viewers at home, had a lifespan of eight years, would have to be dumped in the ocean, and required 'massive subsidies' to sustain them. He had stopped as many in the US as he could. Alas, some 'poor stupid people' had approved a number of them before he came along.
Starmer, who approves of windmills, didn't seem to like that. There was the mildest of twitches in his otherwise disciplined facial expression. His countenance was that of a condemned prisoner having his death warrant read out and wishing they would just skip to the shooting.
Trump proposed an alternative energy source, one that involved creating only a hole in the ground 'this big' — he cupped his hands by way of illustration. He was talking about drilling the North Sea bed for oil. At this juncture, Starmer looked like he would happily climb into a hole in the sea, anything to escape this televised torture.
Trump is awful, of course, but he's a wonderful kind of awful. He's that friend everyone has who is a bit of a rogue but so damn charming you can't resist them.
Watching one of his press conferences is like being present at a bomb disposal operation. You find yourself fixated on his every word, tic, breath and flutter of the eyes, knowing that, any second now, he could cut the wrong wire and blow everyone to kingdom come.
Mercifully, the press conference concluded without any detonations, but the prime minister still looked shellshocked. Without really trying Trump had made him look small and shifty, doing a number on his credibility that Kemi Badenoch would struggle to manage. The man's only been in the country a few days and already he's the new leader of the opposition.
The Labour leader wasn't the only politician left reeling by Trump's restless tongue. The president proposed that there not be another referendum on Scottish independence for 50 or 75 years. Given how slow progress is under John Swinney, the SNP rank and file should take Trump up on his offer.
The political class resents Trump and, yes, he is vulgar, crass, short-tempered and toweringly arrogant, but he speaks in a plain, direct language never heard in British politics. There's no artifice there. He's too much of an egomaniac for that. But for all his flaws, two men sat before the world's press yesterday and while one could brag about his successes in office the other could only squirm.