Can a Labour prime minister get on with a Republican president?

Published

1 year ago

November 9, 2024

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Can a Labour prime minister get on well with a Republican US president? Or a Conservative PM with a Democrat in the White House?

The short answer is yes, absolutely.

There are plenty of examples of a good relationship and close bond between a Labour prime minister and Republican president. And vice versa.

Indeed, some prime ministers and presidents from seemingly opposing political parties have bonded for the simplest or most trivial reasons. Cigars, toothpaste and burgers, for example.

And it’s not always rosy between prime ministers and presidents of the two sister parties. There have been some big fallings out: over Suez, Vietnam and the Caribbean island of Grenada.

But never has a British Labour prime minister faced such special challenges in maintaining the “special relationship” with a Republican president as Sir Keir Starmer does right now.

It’s not just policy differences – on issues such as trade tariffs, Ukraine, Israel, defence spending, Brexit and climate change – that divide Downing Street and the White House right now.

Never before has an incoming president faced such a tirade of brutal insults from senior members of a UK government like those hurled at him by leading members of Sir Keir’s cabinet.

He’s a “racist KKK and neo-Nazi sympathiser”, (David Lammy, 2017), an “odious, sad little man”, (Wes Streeting, 2017) and “a racist misogynistic, self-confessed groper”, (Ed Miliband, 2018). And that’s just a sample.

That’s not all. Last month, the Republican Party filed a legal complaint after almost 100 Labour Party aides flew to the US to campaign for Kamala Harris, alleging “blatant foreign interference” in the presidential election.

Critics, led by the new Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, have accused Sir Keir and his party of playing student politics by picking a fight with the most powerful man in the world. And someone who’s notoriously vindictive.

It was all very different 80 years ago (critics would also say that political leaders were real statesmen back then).

The phrase “special relationship”, describing the alliance between the UK and US, was first used by Winston Churchill in a speech in Missouri in 1946, in which he also coined the phrase “the Iron Curtain”.

That speech was introduced by president Harry Truman, a Democrat, with whom Churchill had attended the Potsdam Conference in 1945 to negotiate the terms of the end of the Second World War.

They were close friends and would write handwritten letters to each other and addressed one another as Harry and Winston. Truman was also the only US president to visit Churchill at Chartwell, his family home.

Churchill also had a close relationship with another Democrat president, Franklin D Roosevelt. Their close bond during the Second World War was described as a friendship that saved the world.

One reason they got on famously was that they were both renowned cigar smokers. Like Churchill, Roosevelt’s cigar smoking was a widely reported part of his public persona after he became president.

But after Churchill’s bromances with Democrat presidents, his Conservative successor Anthony Eden fell out badly with the Republican president Dwight Eisenhower over the Suez Crisis in the mid-1950s.

And it was a Conservative prime minister and a Democrat president with seemingly nothing in common, the stuffy and diffident Harold Macmillan and the charismatic John F Kennedy, that repaired the damage.

“Between them they had rescued the special relationship after the rupture of the Suez Crisis, and done so at a time of uniquely high tensions around the world,” wrote British author Christopher Sandford in Harold And Jack, The Remarkable Friendship Of Prime Minister Macmillan And President Kennedy.

It was the early 1960s and these were dangerous times, rather like now, of course. Back then it was the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis and threat of nuclear weapons.

“Through it all, the two leaders had exchanged not only formal messages but also a steady flow of handwritten notes, Christmas and birthday cards, congratulations, and, on occasion, condolences,” Sandford wrote.

But it was a relationship abruptly cut short in 1963, by “supermac’s” demise caused by the John Profumo sex scandal and then JFK’s assassination in Dallas just a month later.

“Like many of those who came into the Kennedys’ orbit,” the Washington Post wrote, “Macmillan was enchanted by Jacqueline Kennedy, and she seems to have happily entered into a father-daughter relationship with him that lasted long after her husband’s assassination.”

After Kennedy, the so-called “special relationship” cooled once again during the tenure of Labour’s Harold Wilson and Democrat Lyndon Johnson, when Wilson rejected pressure from Johnson to send British troops to Vietnam.

And even though Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were ideological soulmates, Thatcher was furious when she wasn’t consulted before the Americans invaded Grenada in 1983 to topple a Marxist regime.

Even worse, according to Thatcher allies, a year earlier Reagan had stayed neutral during the Falklands war. Reagan said he couldn’t understand why two US allies were arguing over “that little ice-cold bunch of land down there”.

Long before the accusations of Starmer’s Labour meddling in the Trump-Harris election, the Tories were accused of dirty tricks in the Bill Clinton-George HW Bush presidential election of 1992.

During the campaign the Home Office checked immigration nationality records to see whether Clinton applied for British citizenship while a student at Oxford University to escape the Vietnam draft. It wasn’t true.

Then prime minister John Major issued a grovelling public apology and Clinton was forgiving. In 1994 the “special relationship” received a huge boost when the president took Major to the home in Pittsburgh where his grandfather and father lived and worked.

Then it was back to Washington where Major became the first foreign leader to stay overnight in the Clinton White House. But as well as the flattery, the pair worked closely in the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Clinton’s political soulmate, of course, was Tony Blair. They were as close as Reagan and Thatcher. But it was with the Republican George W Bush that Labour’s Blair embarked on the defining mission of his premiership, the Iraq war.

George “Dubya” Bush had defeated Clinton’s vice president Al Gore in the bitterly contested presidential election of 2000 and in early 2001 he entertained Blair at Camp David. It was to prove to be a historic encounter.

“He’s a pretty charming guy,” the president gushed at their news conference. “He put the charm offensive on me.” How many times have we heard that said about Tony Blair?

Then it got deeply personal. They were asked if they’d found something in their talks that they had in common. “Well, we both use Colgate toothpaste,” the president replied.

Quick as a flash, an embarrassed Mr Blair intervened: “They’re going to wonder how you know that, George.”

The war was the turning point of Blair’s decade in Number 10. He was branded a liar over claims about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction”, he was vilified by the Labour left and it was the beginning of the end for him.

Some years later, the Tory prime minister sometimes called the “heir to Blair”, David Cameron, bonded over burgers with the Democrat president Barack Obama, serving a BBQ lunch to military families in the Downing Street garden.

They seemed unlikely allies: Obama the first African-American president and Cameron the 19th old Etonian prime minister. It was claimed they had a “transatlantic bromance” in office.

The two leaders were often pictured together playing ping-pong or golf, eating burgers or watching a basketball game. “Yes, he sometimes calls me bro,” Cameron once said of president Obama.

Cameron even persuaded Obama to help the Remain campaign in the 2016 Brexit referendum, when he claimed the UK would be “at the back of the queue” on trade deals with the US if it left the EU.

Which brings us, neatly, to Sir Keir and president-elect Trump and the prime minister’s hopes of building a special relationship.

On the plus side, the president likes the UK – his mother was Scottish and he owns two golf courses in Scotland. And we’re told by Sir Keir that the dinner at Trump Tower in September went well. The mouthy Mr Lammy admitted he was even offered a second portion of chicken. “He was very gracious,” he claimed.

On the other hand, neither the prime minister nor the president smoke cigars, like Churchill and Roosevelt did. We’re not sure which toothpaste they use, unlike Bush and Blair, either.

And while the president obviously likes burgers – he famously flipped them in a McDonald’s during the election campaign – and steak, well done, with ketchup, Sir Keir is vegetarian, though he does eat fish.

But if even a stuffy old toff like Harold Macmillan can get on well with the flamboyant JFK and glamorous Jackie Onassis, there’s hope for Sir Keir and that much-vaunted “special relationship”.

Politics

‘Urgent’ review announced into foreign interference in British politics

Published

3 hours ago

December 16, 2025

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'Urgent' review announced into foreign interference in British politics

Sir Keir Starmer has authorised an “urgent” review into the extent of foreign interference in British politics, as he prepares to change the law to tighten donation rules.

Ministers have initiated a rapid inquiry into current financial rules on donations and election safeguards, which will report at the end of March.

It will be led by Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary of the Brexit department.

Politics latest: Who could lead Labour instead of Starmer?

The inquiry is a direct response to the jailing of Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales, who admitted accepting tens of thousands of pounds in cash to make pro-Russian statements to the media and European Parliament.

In this case, officers said that they believed some individuals had a direct link to Vladimir Putin.

Communities Secretary Steve Reed, who announced the inquiry to the Commons on Tuesday, wants Mr Rycroft to assess how well the rules work at the moment and promised the report will be published in full.

Mr Reed told MPs that the “conduct [of Gill] is a stain on our democracy”.

“The independent review will work to remove that stain,” he said.

The review could then lead to changes in the Elections Bill, due this spring, which could significantly change the way elections are financed.

Tuesday’s announcement is likely to ignite a firestorm of criticism.

Among the changes that could result from the Rycroft report could be a clampdown on cryptocurrency donations, which Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has said in the past would be a direct attack on his party.

It could introduce new rules for donations to thinktanks, which fall outside any regulatory regime at the moment, and could see new rules around foreign donations.

Foreign donors can effectively give money if they have a trading UK subsidiary at the moment.

The government has already promised to clamp down on “shell” companies, but this could give more clarity over how this will work.

It could also look at funding of “troll farms” – vast banks of social media accounts based overseas designed to try and sway public opinion as part of state disinformation campaigns.

However, the financial affairs of and donations to Labour MPs could be in the scope of the review, and those named in the report could face fresh disciplinary consequences.

The government also singled out Christine Lee, the UK-based lawyer accused of working covertly on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party, as another case of concern.

Nevertheless, other parties are likely to suggest this is an attempt to change the donation rules in Labour’s favour, after promising to lower the voting age to 16 and cancelling some mayoral elections because of a local government re-organisation.

The review will invite all party leaders to take part in “in-depth assessment of the current financial rules and safeguards and offer recommendations to further mitigate risks from foreign political interference”.

Mr Rycroft cannot compel politicians to give evidence, but he will have access to the security services, though the extent of their cooperation is unclear.

The conduct around the Brexit referendum has been specifically excluded in the terms of reference, and Mr Rycroft will be instructed to focus on more “recent” cases, although there is no specific start date.

The 12-week timeline for the inquiry, alongside the lack of statutory powers, is likely to make it hard for Mr Rycroft to uncover substantial new incidents of bribery or corruption and prove them to a standard necessary to put details in the public domain.

The publication date, at the end of March, comes just five weeks before local elections in which Reform UK is expected to do well, and opposition politicians are likely to question the timing.

Mr Rycroft has previously locked horns with Boris Johnson.

He argued that, at times, Mr Johnson was a PM who “only speaks for England”, his government was “not sensitive to the niceties of constitutional convention” and had “imperious disregard” for devolved policies, fuelling the breakup of the UK.

In June last year, just before the election, when Rishi Sunak was PM, he signed a letter to The Times which said: “Trust in politics, and in the people and institutions of public life, is at an all-time low.

“This is a serious problem for the health of our democracy and is indicative of the need for substantial improvement in the governance of the UK.”

Mr Rycroft has previously expressed his caution about the relationship between big tech and politics, telling Sky News two years ago: “Politicians do have to be a little bit careful in this space.

“Nobody’s elected Elon Musk, his opinions are those of a businessman, he is not a statesman.

“Clearly, they can court business people for their investment, but they shouldn’t look as though they’re kowtowing to them in terms of their regulatory concepts.

“They should listen to their views, but it should be democratically elected politicians that take those really, really important decisions, and let’s hope that’s the case in the UK.”

It comes as Reform and the Conservatives both received significantly higher donations than Labour in the first three quarters of this year.

They included the largest ever political donation from a living person: £9m to Reform UK from British-Thai businessman Christopher Harborne.

Politics

Justice Secretary Angela Constance survives no confidence vote amid grooming gangs row

Published

3 hours ago

December 16, 2025

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Justice Secretary Angela Constance survives no confidence vote amid grooming gangs row

Scotland’s justice secretary has survived a vote of no confidence amid claims she misrepresented a leading expert on grooming gangs and therefore misled parliament.

MSP Angela Constance has ignored calls to stand down and has First Minister John Swinney’s full backing in the wake of comments she made about Professor Alexis Jay.

Mr Swinney led her defence, describing her as a “sincere minister” who was “getting on with the job of making Scotland safer”.

Both Scottish Labour and the Scottish Conservatives lodged motions of no confidence, with a debate held at Holyrood on Tuesday afternoon.

Scottish Labour, the Scottish Tories and the Scottish Liberal Democrats joined forces to vote against Ms Constance, but the motion failed due to the backing of the SNP and Scottish Greens.

MSP Russell Findlay, leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said: “Shameless SNP and Green MSPs put partisan politics before truth and integrity, to the understandable fury of grooming gang victims.

“To any reasonable person, Angela Constance’s position is untenable. She misled parliament by misrepresenting Professor Jay, tried to cover it up and then publicly lied after being caught.

“She twisted Professor Jay’s words to reject our calls for a Scottish grooming gangs inquiry and then failed to correct the record.

“It’s an open-and-shut case of a ministerial code breach for which she should lose her job.”

The row revolves around a comment made by Ms Constance as MSPs debated the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill in September.

Amid a failed Scottish Conservative amendment for a public inquiry to be established into grooming gangs in Scotland, Ms Constance insisted Professor Jay agreed with her that such a probe was not needed.

However, emails made public by the Scottish government last week revealed the professor – who led the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham in 2014 – later contacted Ms Constance to say she would “appreciate” her position “being clarified”.

Professor Jay added that her comments quoted by Ms Constance had “nothing to do” with the situation in Scotland.

Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said he supported the motion as “victims and survivors of grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation have lost confidence in this justice secretary”.

He added: “The justice secretary misrepresented Professor Jay’s views in order to find an excuse not to have an inquiry into grooming gangs.

“Victims and survivors should be able to rely on their justice system, and their government, to tell the truth, to act with integrity and to put them first.

“On this, the justice secretary has failed.”

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During First Minister’s Questions last week, Mr Swinney claimed Ms Constance “was making a general comment” on the situation as he gave his justice secretary his full backing.

He reiterated his support for Ms Constance during the debate, saying: “The cabinet secretary in the debate in September did not state that Professor Jay was speaking directly about the amendment.

“She made a general point drawing on the publicly stated views of Professor Jay.

“But I acknowledge that members of parliament and members of the public will draw different conclusions from the words we all use.”

Mr Swinney described Ms Constance as a “sincere minister who would never address parliament in a way that would in any way mislead parliament or the public”.

The first minister added: “She’s never shied away from asking tough questions about our approach to justice.

“Nor has she ever avoided tackling some of the biggest issues that we face.

“For these reasons, Angela Constance has my full confidence as justice secretary.

“She’s getting on with the job of making Scotland safer, and I urge members to enable her to continue doing that by rejecting this motion today.”

The motion was defeated by 57 votes to 67, with one abstention

Politics

US senator sounds alarm on DeFi, cites PancakeSwap amid market structure delay

Published

3 hours ago

December 16, 2025

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US senator sounds alarm on DeFi, cites PancakeSwap amid market structure delay

US Senator Elizabeth Warren, one of the more outspoken voices against digital assets in Congress, is calling for answers from Justice Department and Treasury Department officials about a potential investigation into decentralized crypto exchanges, citing concerns over PancakeSwap and Uniswap.

In a Monday letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Warren asked whether their respective departments were “investigating significant national security risks posed by decentralized cryptocurrency exchanges like PancakeSwap.”

The Massachusetts senator raised concerns about “improper political influence” from the Trump administration over the selective enforcement of crypto companies and reports of money laundering tied to North Korea, asking for a response by Jan. 12.

“As Congress considers crypto market structure legislation—including rules to prevent terrorists, criminals, and rogue states from exploiting decentralized finance (DeFi) to fund their activities—it is critical to understand whether you are seriously investigating these risks,” Warren wrote to Bessent and Bondi, adding:

“The public deserves to know whether you are investigating the serious risks identified by national security experts and the crypto industry itself.”

Government, United States, Department of Justice, Investigation, PancakeSwap — *Monday letter from Senator Elizabeth Warren. Source:* *Senate Banking Committee*

Warren’s letter came as the US Senate prepared to wind down activities before the chamber broke for the holidays. Some Republicans on the Banking Committee had expected to address the digital market structure bill, known as the Responsible Financial Innovation Act, before the end of the year. However, Chair Tim Scott confirmed on Monday that a markup hearing on the legislation had been pushed to 2026.

The Massachusetts senator also raised concerns over reports that PancakeSwap had been “drumming up interest among traders to use coins issued by the Trump family’s main crypto company, World Liberty Financial.”

Some Senate Democrats have raised concerns about the US president’s potential influence and conflicts of interest regarding the legislation, given his and his family’s ties to the crypto industry.

XRP lawyer who challenged Warren in 2024 will run again

John Deaton, the lawyer who ran against Warren in the 2024 US election, is making another bid for Congress. Deaton has been an advocate for XRP (XRP) holders in court, emerging as a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency industry over the past few years.