Steve Darling urges stronger UK stance on Trump and global security

I want to start by thanking the SWISCo team members and our emergency services including the coastguard who were out this Sunday cleaning up the debris from Storm Ingrid.

As many coastal roads have been affected by the storm, I would like to urge everyone in Torbay to drive carefully. 

In addition to Storm Ingrid, another disastrous force has been wreaking havoc on the UK this week: President Trump. This Government’s approach to Trump needs to change. Keir Starmer’s weak protest after Trump talked down the involvement of UK troops in Afghanistan is just another piece of evidence towards this. 

Trump’s behaviour in Venezuela and his aborted threats around Greenland show his total disregard for international law. Some in the UK and amongst our allies are beginning to realise that appeasing Trump is no longer a viable strategy.

At the Davos Summit last week, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a speech focussing on the new realities of global politics, describing the New Order as one where ‘the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’

As an alternative to pretending that a rules-based order exists, Carney suggested that ‘Middle Powers’ like Canada and the UK adopt a strategy of ‘values-based realism’ where they create many different alliances based on values such as the Coalition of the Willing around Ukraine. He pointed to Canada’s comprehensive partnership with the EU, including joining SAFE, the European defence procurement arrangements. 

In the UK, Ed Davey has been calling Trump an ‘International Gangster,’ a phrase which I used in early January when addressing the Foreign Minister in Parliament.

Ed suggested a range of measures to tackle Trump by forcing him to back down from his increasingly concerning schemes including cancelling the UK pharmaceuticals deal to prevent the NHS from paying £3 billion more in higher medical costs.  Standing up to Trump is possible since the US did indeed back down from its trade war with China after warning signs from Wall Street.

In fact, Trump backs down so often that the acronym TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) has become increasingly popular in Westminster and abroad. 

It is clear that Keir Starmer’s approach of placating Trump with Royal invitations and a refusal to criticise his illegal actions is not bearing fruit. Such actions only allow Nigel Farage, who was present at the Davos summit when Keir Starmer was not, to cozy up to Trump as Trump seeks to use him as a tool to humiliate Starmer.

Farage is even less likely to stand up to Trump than Starmer. He himself admitted to breaching parliamentary rules when he failed to register a trip to Florida to appear at a fundraising event for Trump, a $500-a-head Republican dinner party in Tallahassee. All this when Farage is in fact the highest paid MP. 

Evidently we need a different approach to Starmer’s toadying and Farage’s chuminess with Trump. This is why in Parliament last week I urged the Foreign Secretary to consider the fact that Trump and Putin only understand strength and pressed the Government to stand up to both of them in order to consolidate our position on the global stage. 

Trump’s chaotic behaviour is distracting from Ukraine at a vital juncture in the war. In fact, commentators this week noted that Trump has started stirring up trouble around Greenland just when there is mounting concern in Kyiv about the coming winter with minus 20 degrees Celsius weather combined with the heavy Russian bombing of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. 

In order to protect the safety and security of Ukraine we must be able to stand up to Trump and look to create new axes of power through combining the strength of ‘Middle Powers’ together. Even Starmer’s Business and Trade Secretary, Peter Kyle, noted this week that it would be ‘crazy’ to dismiss entirely the idea of joining the EU customs union. These sorts of alliances will help build a new era of global politics where we can confront ‘international gangsters’ like Trump and Putin.