Is Starmer’s reluctance to criticise Trump smart tactics – or the sign of a man without a plan? |
For an inveterate liar, Donald Trump is remarkably honest. The best guide to what he thinks is what he says. When forecasting his likely course of action, start with his declared intentions – removing the president of Venezuela, for example – and assume he means it. When he says the US must take possession of Greenland, he is not kidding.
The motives are sometimes muddled but rarely hidden. Trump likes making deals, especially real estate deals, and money. He wants to be great and to have his greatness affirmed with praise and prizes. He craves spectacle. The world as he describes it doesn’t always resemble observable reality, but there is an effortless, sociopathic sincerity to his falsehoods. The truth is whatever he intuits it to be in the moment to advance his interests and manipulate his audience.
Trump’s freewheeling brazenness lies at the extreme end of a spectrum where the opposite pole is Keir Starmer’s verbal constipation on camera. It isn’t the most profound difference between the two men, but the contrast reveals something significant about the prime minister’s present difficulties.
It isn’t just a deficit of telegenic panache. Saying whatever comes to mind is a privilege of unaccountable power. Trump doesn’t have to care about the consequences of his words. Minding your language for fear of offending a vindictive despot is a habit well known to subjects of authoritarian rule. It has now become the diplomatic mode of the US’s former allies.
It took Downing Street 16 hours to comment on the US seizure of Nicolás Maduro from Caracas. The position, once revealed, straddled the gulf between the government’s stated commitment to international law and its undeclared policy of never impugning Trump. Ministers have held that........