Peter Mandelson has learned that favours for, and loyalty to, a sex offender can end a sticky career. Keir Starmer, this week, is bringing the King himself into a bid to charm another American who’s been found liable for sexual assault, convicted of felonies, and is a serial bankrupt.
Mandelson oiled up to Jeffrey Epstein because Britain’s former ambassador to Washington has always seemingly been mesmerised by power and money.
Starmer has organised Donald Trump’s state visit, pomp, parades and banquets as a strategic necessity – to wean the US president off the Russian teat. To protect Britain’s economy from the US president. And to protect the UK and Europe from a surge in Trumpian ideologues at home.
Trump, for now, has slapped the UK with 10 per cent tariffs on top of existing import duties. The EU, a bigger US market, has been hit with tariffs of 20 to 50 per cent. So keeping the US president sweet is financially wise.
On Tuesday, Trump will be afforded the singular honour of a second state visit to the United Kingdom. The invitation from the King was hand-delivered to the Oval Office by the British prime minister.
Trump is no Roosevelt, no Kennedy, no Eisenhower. He is not a great US president whom the British want to flatter with the geegaws and frippery of mounted parades and white tie dinners.
He is an unpredictable force that has to be contained. Like a toddler. Lest he throw a tantrum and smash the carefully constructed models of Western democracy, waddles off with his toys to Vladimir Putin, and hits the UK with import duties that enfeeble British exports.
So the British will give him an enormous national party. Trump will be made to feel that the special relationship is his. His alone. That he has a special connection to a Disney vision of the British Crown.
There will be no sly comments about his own pretensions to monarchy.
Perhaps the King will be asked to use every ounce of his finely honed courtly skills to steer Trump away from his Big Oil obsession and back towards understanding climate change. Or not to mention his favourite policy subject at all.
There is hardly a single issue on which Trump is not out of step with the rest of the mainstream Western world.
He thinks tariffs are paid by foreign exporters, not American consumers; he’s increasing fossil fuel production and use; he is tearing up green legislation; he adopted Putin’s arguments on Ukraine; and has (like Putin) threatened the sovereignty of his neighbours and allies.
On top of that, his administration has openly supported anti-democratic movements on Europe’s far right – notably in Germany, France, and Romania.
Trump has jeopardised the cornerstone alliances of Nato and the Five Eyes intelligence relationship that bind the West together as militaries and that links the Anglosphere into a web of trust.
Trump is no fan of Nato. He has refused to contemplate any American support for Ukraine in its defence against Russia. Meanwhile, the four eyes outside the US – the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – do not trust the Trump administration.
They have proved incompetent with secrets and unable to use encrypted telephones, even when in territory like Moscow. Trump himself has blurted secrets before, scorned his own intelligence services, and kept confidential documents from his last presidency in his Florida bathroom.
His apparent devotion to Putin has further entrenched the belief among the intelligence communities of America’s allies that the US president is a liability.
He is a liability. He has been successfully manipulated by Russia and Putin for years.
So now it’s Britain’s turn, and as head of state, the star turn in Trump-charming is the King himself. He, no doubt, will play his part.
But it’s Starmer who has to befriend the US president. The British prime minister believes he’s got to hold the US president close and tight. It’s an uncomfortable embrace he will regret as much as sending the friend of a sex criminal to Washington.
