Starmer’s Faustian Pact

As people starve the elites gorge themselves at banquet. The grotesque Trump pantomime rolled into town and our PM rolled over. As Starmer promises his ‘second phase’ of government will be about ‘national renewal’ most of us see chaos and corruption, resignations and appeasement to the forces of fascism.

Like a Great British Menu, minus Gregg Wallace and Prince Andrew, the state banquet was, by all accounts, a sumptuous affair.

To starters of Hampshire watercress panna cotta with Parmesan shortbread and quail’s egg salad, the feudal remains of one Kingdom mingled with the trailer trash Emperor of another. Between the two were the remnants of the British Labour Party mouthing ‘Special Relationship’ as they indulged in national self-abasement. Such personal and political humiliation has minimal impact; the long-coveted deal to slash US steel and aluminium tariffs to zero has been shelved on the eve of Donald Trump’s state visit.

Instead of a tariff reduction, the Trump administration brought Blackstone, with a datacentre in Blyth, Northumberland. This is part of a new AI growth zone designed to boost the construction of datacentres, which are the central nervous system of AI technology.

The political calculation is twofold. First, what we witnessed at Chequers and Windsor Castle was the construction of the recently departed Ambassador. His vision was that post-Brexit Britain had freed the UK from European regulatory frameworks and made Britain a more attractive site for US investors.

TL:DR – carveup.

All this requires ‘cheap’ new nuclear to power the AI revolution.

So the first calculation is geopolitical, it places the UK firmly with the US. Mandelson was always very pro-European but he is even more part of Labour’s transatlanticist camp. Excuse the pun, and yes that does suggest spooks.

The second calculation is about domestic politics.

Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham will be the main beneficiaries of the Anglo-American AI ‘growth zones’. This is all Red Wall political pork-barrel.

Sharp-eyed readers may see some flaws in this plan, foisted on Starmer by his departing Prince of Darkness, whose sense of judgement might just be a teeny bit questionable.

First things first, throwing Jobs and AI at the dogs that have been unleashed of whatever vile concoction of forces that have been untethered is hardly going to win you back the ‘Red Wall’ never mind England.

Second, the Faustian Pact seems to have no preconditions, no leverage of power and no wider rationale. Doing a deal with Trump is famously impervious, fluid and unstable. Starmer, or his wider coterie, has no control over his ridiculous relationship with Putin, no influence on his creeping authoritarianism and nothing to stop him engaging in ongoing Real Estate/Genocide plans with Netanyahu.

When The Sun correspondent piped out at the press conference, pressing all of Trump’s buttons on immigration and ‘wind turbines’ it left the Prime Minister floundering and defensive as the President went into a soliloquoy on Drill, Baby, Drill, troops in the streets and so on.

Starmer’s strategy is appeasement of everything at all times.

Meanwhile, our closest buddy, our special friend, has engaged in more and more outrageous domestic policies as he ushers America further into the dark ages.

In between being paraded around in a golden buggy like a gigantic baby, Trump emerged like something out of the Brothers Grimm to shut down the people who laugh at him.

Mostly anodyne, mostly white, liberal and ineffectual, late-night tv shows have been a stalwart of mild comic rebuke of the worst excesses of American politics. It’s become intolerable for the MAGA movement to have any hint of dissent as they try desperately to use Charlie Kirk’s death as a reason to lock down. This isn’t cancel culture its state repression.

The cancellation of Stephen Colbert, followed by Jimmy Kimmel follows the egregious Bill Maher, who, if anything, shows that being a jester to Trump’s proto-fascist regime won’t protect you.

The lesson across the board is the same: appeasement doesn’t work.

The combination of cosying up to an unhinged wannabe dictator, AI and nuclear is a recipe for disaster. It only comes about because Starmer is a desperately compromised man without a plan, fighting for his political life. This is unsustainable and will result, I dread, sooner than we think in a Farage regime that will model itself on the hellscape we have seen emerging across the water, and fawning and dining the monster will be seen as a terrible, indefensible historic mistake.

Image credit: Cold War Steve

[this article was first published in the National’s Seven Days supplement]