Keir Starmer has never had a bad word to say in public about Donald Trump.
That is not being reciprocated now as the American president lambasts the British prime minister over his reluctance to join the US-Israeli strikes on Iran.
“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” Trump said at the White House, blasting Britain's reluctance to let US warplanes use its bases.
The dispute is roiling a relationship that Starmer worked hard to forge, and further straining trans-Atlantic ties frayed by Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and transactional approach to international relations.
Britain is in Trump's bad books
“This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe,” Trump told British tabloid The Sun in an interview published today.
“I mean, France has been great. They’ve all been great," Trump said. “The UK has been much different from others.”
“It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was,” he said.
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Starmer initially blocked American planes from using British bases for the attacks on Iran that started late Saturday. He later agreed to let the United States use bases in England and on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to strike Iran’s ballistic missiles and their storage sites, but not to hit other targets.
Even after the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus was hit by an Iran-made drone over the weekend, Starmer said that the United Kingdom “will not join offensive action.” He said today that a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Dragon, and Wildcat helicopters with counter-drone capabilities were being sent to the region as part of “defensive operations.” British forces have also shot down drones in Jordanian and Iraqi airspace, the government said.
Starmer has offered a rare, though implicit, rebuke of the US president, saying that the UK government doesn't believe in “regime change from the skies".
“Any UK actions must always have a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan,” Starmer told lawmakers in the House of Commons.
“President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain’s national interest,” Starmer added.
The Financial Times called it Starmer’s “Love Actually moment” — a reference to the 2003 movie scene in which a British prime minister played by Hugh Grant stands up to a bullying US president played by Billy Bob Thornton.
Friction has grown over Greenland and Diego Garcia
Friction between the two leaders has been building for months. Trump’s threat to take over Greenland was denounced by Starmer and other European leaders earlier this year. Recently, Trump has condemned Britain’s agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to the Diego Garcia base, to Mauritius, despite his administration earlier backing the deal.
Peter Ricketts, a former head of the UK Foreign Office, told The Observer newspaper that under Trump, “the Americans have effectively given up on any effort to be consistent with international law".
That is a red line for the law-abiding Starmer, a barrister and former chief prosecutor for England and Wales.
The spat is a setback for Starmer’s efforts to woo Trump since the president's return to office in 2025. The British government rolled out the red carpet to the president for a state visit as the guest of King Charles III, and Starmer consistently has praised Trump's efforts — so far unsuccessful — to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
The Iran war has also divided European leaders, who fall along a spectrum from condemnation to support.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that he unreservedly approves of Trump’s decision to attack Iran and kill its supreme leader, and called the war crucial for Europe’s security.
The UK, France and Germany jointly said that they weren't involved in the strikes, but were prepared to enable “necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source".
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the strikes as “unjustifiable” and “dangerous.”
Polling suggests many Britons are skeptical of the US justification for war. But politicians to the right of Starmer’s Labour Party slammed the prime minister for not joining the offensive. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that her party “stands behind America taking this necessary action against state-sponsored terror.”
Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty denied the US-UK “special relationship” was on the ropes.
“Our relationship with the United States is strong,” he said in the House of Commons. “It has endured, it continues to endure, and it will endure into the future on both the economic and the security fronts.”
The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including Trump’s rationale for attacking Iran, and the return of a Kiwi film classic. (Source: Breakfast)
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