TOI correspondent from LondonBritain’s government is scrambling to ease tensions in the UK-US special relationship after 100 Labor Party workers traveled to the US to campaign for Kamala Harris in the presidential election, and old hateful comments surfaced from Labor frontbenchers who have been fiercely critical of the US president-elect.
Donald Trump’s lawyers last month asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate allegations of foreign interference and illegal foreign contributions by Labor to the Harris campaign.
Starmer wrote in ‘X’ in 2019: “Donald Trump’s endorsement tells you everything you need to know about Boris Johnson’s politics and why he is unfit to be Prime Minister.”
In a 2018 Time article, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy described Trump as a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi-supporting sociopath”, a “dictator” and a “deep threat to the international order”.
In a 2019 tweet, Lammy wrote: “Confused, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic, Donald Trump is no friend of Britain. He is unfit to hold public office” and “Donald Trump lies more times than the average person goes to the bathroom in a day.”
Starmer tweeted to congratulate Trump the day he won the election, as did Lammy, and Starr also rushed to call Trump on Wednesday.
Insiders told Bloomberg that Trump has repeatedly told aides that the new UK prime minister is “too left-wing” and that Starmer’s policies have been heavily criticized by Elon Musk at ‘X’ in recent months.
Sean Spicer, the former White House press secretary, told ITV that Trump would not forget Lammy’s type of comments, but that he had seen the Labor government try to “take back those comments” and that Trump would “always have a conversation”.
Four years ago, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Reiner called Trump a “boon” who had “no place in the White House.”
On Thursday she was quick to call out Vice President-elect JD Vance, who said during the election campaign: “Britain under Labor could be the first real Islamist country to get nuclear weapons.”
Reiner tweeted after the call that it was great talking to Vance. “We talked about our plans for the future and how, working together, we can build on the special relationship between our great countries.”
Asked about Trump’s abuse on a BBC newscast, Lammy dismissed the tweet as “old news”.
“A lot of things were said about Trump on Twitter during that time. It was a daily occurrence. Now that I’m secretary of state, I’ve had dinner with Donald Trump. He said it never came up in their conversation, “not even vaguely,” and he described himself as “very gracious. , was found to be a generous host”.
“What you say as a backbencher and what you do in the actual duties of public office are two different things…” Lammy said.