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On the 16th of September, an authoritarian despot and his coterie touched down in the United Kingdom. The man who arrived in Windsor was a leader who has presided over the dismantling of democratic institutions and the erosion of freedom of speech in his own country, and has enabled genocide and emboldened dictators abroad.

Unfortunately for Britain, Europe and the rest of the democratic West, this wasn’t the leader of some banana republic, or a dictator with little relevance to our interests. Instead, as the President of the United States stepped off Air Force One, the supplication of the British state to the most powerful fascist in the world was evident.   

President Donald Trump is unlike any other US President. While there have been differences between the policies of the UK and the US, it has rarely been so stark. It’s important to never normalise what Donald Trump represents, or ever to place him in the same category as other world leaders whom we may disagree with on policy or values, but we are at least able to share the same basic understanding of the world. 

Instead, Trump, in his first 9 months in power, has presided over the erosion of the American Republic through judicial attacks on political opponents, hijacking the federal government to consolidate power around his presidency and silence dissent in the bureaucracy and independent news or social media platforms being placed under the direction of right-wing oligarchs or simply bullied into silence and submission – as we saw with Jimmy Kimmel being taken off air for simply using his right to free speech. 

His record on foreign affairs is no less disturbing, and in just nine months, President Trump has brought international law and our internationalist world order to its knees. Vladimir Putin was invited to US territory as an honoured guest, while Volodmyr Zelensky was humiliated in the Oval Office. Donald Trump is the only man with the power to force Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire and stop the mass killing in Gaza – and yet under his watch, Israel’s genocide has reached its darkest point yet, with a manmade famine declared by the IPC, and 10% of Gaza’s population dead or injured; at least 83% of whom are innocent civilians – according to Israel’s own military intelligence.

This is almost unprecedented in the post-war area, surpassed only by the genocides of the 1990s in Rwanda and Srebrenica, as well as Russia’s 2022 siege of Mariupol. Yet, Trump colludes with the architects of slaughter and imperialism – legitimising the carving of up Ukraine and the alteration of borders by force; bringing us back to the age of great power relations and an international order where the strong prey upon the weak, as well as seeking to profit off the ethnic cleansing of Palestine – with his pledge to “clean out” Gaza, viewing it as a “big real estate site”.

While a relationship with the United States is undeniably necessary; the Labour government has failed to have the courage of its convictions and call Trump out for the gargantuan damage he is doing to the interests of Britain and Europe, as well as the decimation of a rules-based world order. 

Arguably, Keir Starmer & the Labour Right’s deficiency of principles or conviction appears to have extended to the field of relations with Trump. In pursuit of economic benefits, the Labour government has cosied up to President Trump, disregarding MAGA’s interference in UK politics, and failing to explore alternative foreign alliances that don’t leave Britain at the mercy of Trump’s revanchism. It’s important to assess what material benefit the UK has actually gained from its steadfast refusal to call out the Trump administration. The UK was not excluded from Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs, which further reduced the UK’s already sluggish economic growth. There seems to have been little impact regarding Trump’s policies of appeasement towards Putin, and the genocide in Gaza continues, with his explicit approval and authorisation.

Trump is also widely reviled in Britain, with YouGov finding 70% of the population holds an unfavourable view of the President. Yet, the British government fails to reflect public opinion and hold Trump to account, nor do they derive any real economic benefit from the close relationship to the administration. Instead of cosying up to Trump, the UK should look to Europe, and focus on rebuilding ties with our allies and neighbours on the continent, starting with repairing the self-inflicted damage of Brexit. Regrettably, we have a government focused on short term interests and day to day survival in a changed global order, rather than one that actually tries to reduce our absolute dependency on an unreliable ally.

There are also chilling parallels between Trump’s America and Britain today. While we may not have a government of the populist right here, the far right is still setting the political agenda, dragging the Labour government into a race to the bottom on migration, civil liberties and climate change. The extreme right in the UK is amplified by those in the United States, with billionaires like Elon Musk using their platforms to spread messages of hate and division, and Reform UK recycles the tactics and rhetoric of the MAGA movement. Fascists march on Britain’s streets, aided and abetted by their allies in the United States; who go right to the top of the Trump administration.

In order to fight this horrifying movement, the Left needs to call out those that are sustaining it – but instead, Labour cosies up to the man who has done more to spearhead it than any other. A potential Farage government would copy Trump’s playbook of attacks on democratic institutions and minorities; but the Labour Party seems to be afraid of actually calling out the connection between the far right movement in the UK, and the administration in the US. Furthermore, Labour has actually set out a playbook for Farage to follow in a crackdown on protest and free speech under a Reform UK administration.

Through attacks on peaceful protest and direct action groups like Palestine Action, a chilling precedent has been set, where protesters can be characterised as terrorists and their voices silenced by the forces of the state – one that is ripe for exploitation against those who oppose government policy under a Reform government. 

Trump’s influence on the British far right is profound, and yet he received a royal welcome in the same week that fascists paraded on the streets – enabled by the enormous cultural sway of his oligarchical backers, and emboldened by his consolidation of power and attacks on minorities. The UK is not granted special treatment by the President, and we gain little economic benefit from the position of our government. Instead, the British State watches passively before genocide, impunity and imperialism, burning our moral authority to seek the favour of a man who is bringing international law, American democracy and the entire post-war world order to its knees.