Just as peace descends when a fractious toddler finally goes to sleep and exhausted parents stumble across the Lego to reach for a glass of wine, so it must have felt at Davos when Donald Trump appeared to row back from his threats to Greenland. But, as with that toddler or indeed any immature, irrational and temperamental creature, we know this respite is transient. Trump is a bully and a narcissist driven solely by greed for power and wealth. His threat to the world cannot be dismissed and as Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney eloquently put it, we are in the midst of a “rupture, not a transition.” He went on to warn that “Nostalgia is not a strategy….. compliance will not buy safety ……middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Mr Carney got a standing ovation, not normal at Davos. Having won the Canadian election against the odds by standing up to Trump, the former governor of the Bank of England is increasingly looking like the de facto leader of those ‘middle powers’.
Keir Starmer didn’t go to Davos which in itself is a signal that perhaps he’s not going to bend to the will of Trump so readily – unless the thought of David Lammy standing in at PMQs was an even worse prospect.
Starmer’s language regarding Greenland has been more robust and after a year of painstaking flattery, cajoling and accommodation, criticised by many and no doubt personally uncomfortable at times, he may have realised that there’s no way of dealing with someone as unhinged as Trump. The increasingly incoherent ramblings of the US President peppered with lies, false claims, petulance and ignorance are an embarrassment. As we all swivel from Venezuela to Greenland, Ukraine gets put on the back burner again and Gaza is all but forgotten – not even mentioned in Trump’s proposed Board of Peace. Invitations to join that repulsive club have been extended to Putin and Netanyahu among others, all for the joining fee of $1bn in cash up front. I’m probably being a bit picky but it seems a little odd to have at least two people who could face arrest on charges of war crimes sitting on a so-called board of peace. The grotesque creation and funding of ICE and its agents’ behaviour is becoming more like Trump’s private militia, outside the laws and rules that the police and armed services are meant to abide by. And, of course, while all this chaos ensues, nobody’s talking about the Epstein files.
According to Yougov this week more Britons see the USA as being unfriendly or hostile towards Europe than at any point over the past nine years which surely is a public sentiment that Starmer can tap into and put the UK on a firmer footing with Europe and those ‘middle powers’ Carney spoke of. With Trump, there is no middle – just a hollow man.
