LONDON — A shrug, perhaps even a flash of dismay. But despite the public insults emanating from the White House, those close to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer say there is little chance he will hit back at President Donald Trump over the Iran war.
The embattled prime minister is still pursuing close coordination with Trump, even after the latest indignity hurled by the president toward London as the conflict threatens havoc on the already stale British economy.
This weekend, Trump reposted a sketch, portraying the British leader as a weakling terrified of his fearsome American counterpart, that aired on the inaugural episode of the new "Saturday Night Live UK"
“Oh, golly,” a fictionalized Starmer frets in his recognizable nasal tones. “What if Donald shouts at me?”
The president shared the skit after weeks of insults and accusations leveled at Starmer for not joining the Iran war.
This was a dramatic turn after Starmer had sought a reputation as something of a Trump-whisperer — even if that went down badly with many Britons at home, failing to win discernible gains over the Ukraine war and Trump’s hostile pursuit of Greenland.
Rather than humiliating Starmer, however, Trump’s recent public criticism may actually give an inadvertent boost to the deeply unpopular prime minister among the anti-Trump British public.
“In Keir Starmer’s view, there’s absolutely no purpose in getting into a public slanging match with the president,” said Tom Baldwin, the former head of communications for Starmer’s Labour Party who remains a key figure in the prime minister’s orbit. “It’s not because he’s in hock to him or that he’s desperate to please him. It’s just not his style.”
Baldwin, who wrote a sympathetic biography of Starmer in 2024, said that the “deep and long-lasting security relationship with America” was “stronger than any one president or, indeed, any one prime minister.”
Starmer “will have shrugged rather than sulked when he saw that the president had retweeted that Saturday Night Live sketch,” said a former senior adviser to the prime minister, who requested anonymity so they could talk candidly about their time in his team.
“He will just say: ‘Well, Trump is Trump,’” the former adviser said, based on his experiences working with Starmer. “If you have a bumpy 24 hours with President Trump, then that’s just part of what comes with his personality.”
Starmer’s quandary offers insight into how American allies struggle to balance their vital military, intelligence and economic ties with the United States, while navigating Trump’s norm-busting foreign policy moves and brusque personal style.
In Britain, Starmer must also factor in his own voters’ dislike of the American-Israeli assault on Iran (59% against and 25% for, according to YouGov) and their long-standing antipathy toward Trump himself, whose net favorability in the United Kingdom is currently at minus 65.
The British prime minister is only marginally less disliked by Britons, with his net favorability of minus 48 one of the worst since YouGov started tracking this metric in the 1970s.
As a serious former human rights lawyer and public prosecutor, Starmer could not be further from Trump’s style and substance. He nonetheless made an unashamed effort to woo Trump during a visit to Washington in February last year, even producing the flourish of a signed state-visit invite from King Charles III.
Some Britons criticized what they saw as the spectacle of Starmer overtly pandering to Trump’s ego.
"Starmer’s approach to Trump has followed a familiar script in British politics: flattery, acquiescence, and a kind of diplomatic sane-washing," said James Schneider, Labour's former director of communications under Starmer's leftist predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
But for Starmer's team the priority has always been building that relationship, the former adviser said, at a time when other leaders’ outspokenness may have frozen them out.
Britain often touts the importance of its “special relationship” with Washington and, in return, U.S. leaders have said there was no greater bond than the one with London.
No one country trades more with Britain than the U.S., and London has become deeply reliant on American intelligence, as well as technical know-how for its nuclear weapons program.
It’s not all one way, though.
The U.S. often needs military bases in Britain and throughout Europe to launch sorties over the Middle East. And this is what has earned Trump’s ire.
Starmer was slow to grant permission for American bombers to launch defensive strikes against Iran from U.K. bases, citing concerns that any strikes must have a “lawful basis” — an echo of the still-lingering regret among many in Britain over its backing of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Starmer eventually allowed them to help defend the Strait of Hormuz amid a looming global oil and supply chain crisis.
That stance was tested over the weekend when Iran fired missiles at the joint British-U.S. Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean. Even before striking Iran, Trump had criticized Britain over its agreement to hand back the Chagos Archipelago, on which the base is situated, to Mauritius.
Trump has derided Starmer as being “no Winston Churchill” while saying he was “not happy” with the man he last year called a friend. For Britons, the ultimate indignity came this weekend, with Trump sharing the "Saturday Night Live UK" skit.
A spokesperson for No. 10 Downing St. declined to comment on the president’s repost. Asked for comment on the British criticisms of Trump's rhetoric, the White House referred to remarks by the president in which he repeated the insults.
The prime minister has framed himself as someone standing up for British opposition to the war despite the jibes from his transatlantic ally.
“I’m utterly focused on what is in the best interests of our country and I am unapologetic about that,” he told a parliamentary committee Monday when asked about Trump’s “quite rude” behavior. “Notwithstanding the pressure that comes from elsewhere, I will remain laser-focused on what is in the British national interest.”
Friction with Trump may be no bad thing, for Starmer's precarious domestic political standing at least.
Trump's hostility toward Starmer has given the prime minister "a degree of political cover," said Schneider, the former Labour official.
Starmer has been able to create "the impression of distance" between himself and the White House, whereas, in critics' opinion, "Britain remains closely aligned with a deeply unpopular and economically damaging war," he said.
"The danger now is that this balancing act collapses. If Starmer continues to tether Britain to Trump’s escalation, the consequences won’t just be geopolitical — they’ll be felt in rising costs and growing political fragility at home," he added.
