Back in the White House for a second term of office, he will soon be off on a victory lap, meeting world leaders.
Early calls will be paid to the countries with which America considers it enjoys a “special relationship” – Canada, Mexico, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The UK, which thinks it has a special relationship, along with other European powers, will come a little later.
And then we will see the emergence of the oddest of odd couples ever to have been thrown together by a geopolitical Cupid: President Donald J Trump, and – if current polling is to be believed – the also newly installed prime minister of the United Kingdom, Keir Starmer.
It will be a “marriage” made in hell.
The two guys could hardly be more different, in outlook, in background and, most jarring, in beliefs. Trump is a hereditary billionaire who lived, and lives, in vast, palatial compounds and has tower blocks named after him; Starmer, proudly, was brought up in a pebble-dashed semi, and the nearest he ever came to property development was buying a field at the back of the old family home in Surrey so his mum could create a donkey sanctuary.
I can’t imagine what Trump would make of that when he reads the State Department briefing on the new British premier. Nor that he was named after a 19th-century socialist.
Whereas Starmer is a distinguished lawyer who’s only ever had a ticket for speeding, Trump is currently facing 91 charges on everything from unlawfully holding confidential documents to manipulating the value of his corporate assets and, er, encouraging an insurrection.
Denne historien er fra January 17, 2024-utgaven av The Independent.
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Denne historien er fra January 17, 2024-utgaven av The Independent.
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