TRUMP HAILS FARAGE ELECTION SUCCESS BUT STAYS SILENT ON STARMER
Donald Trump has hailed Nigel Farage’s success in securing a Westminster seat but declined to say anything about Sir Keir Starmer, as world leaders reacted to Labour’s landslide win.
The former president posted his support for the Reform UK leader on Thursday night, shortly after Mr Farage claimed Clacton. It is the eighth time he has run for a seat in the Commons and the first time he has succeeded.
“Congratulations to Nigel Farage on his big WIN of a Parliament Seat Amid Reform UK Election Success,” he posted on his platform, Truth Social. “Nigel is a man who truly loves his country.”
Trump has long been a supporter of Mr Farage, who said he had been intending to campaign for the Republican nominee this autumn before announcing his intention to stand in the UK.
David Lammy, Sir Keir’s Foreign Secretary, has attempted to build ties with Trump’s campaign team in recent months, meeting Chris LaCivita, his senior adviser, in Washington in May and speaking on the phone with Trump allies in Congress.
Sir Keir has previously suggested he hopes Joe Biden wins November’s US presidential election.
Hillary Clinton said she hoped Sir Keir Starmer’s victory was an “omen” for America as leaders around the world reacted to Labour’s landslide victory.
The former Democrat presidential candidate viewed the victory of the Left in Britain as a hopeful sign Donald Trump could be defeated across the Pacific.
“Congratulations to Labour for a big victory in yesterday’s elections. Let’s hope it’s an omen and work to make it so,” she said.
Joe Biden has yet to publicly congratulate Sir Keir as he faces mounting pressure to step aside as Democrat nominee for president.
The New York Times declined to share Mrs Clinton’s enthusiasm, saying the “61-year-old former human rights lawyer lacks the star power of some of his predecessors” but did quote an analyst as saying he looks “relatively prime-ministerial”.
One of the first world leaders to speak to Sir Keir as the Labour landslide became evident late on Thursday night was Emmanuel Macron.
The French president, who has acute political problems of his own to contend with, congratulated Sir Keir and added that he was “pleased with our first discussion”.
Le Monde was unsparing in its analysis of “an atmosphere of constant fratricidal fights” within the Tory party, as well as political scandals under Boris Johnson and budget miscalculations by Liz Truss.
The newspaper noted that there was no great enthusiasm for Sir Keir and that during the campaign he had “shied away from any boldness, modestly committing himself to a return to “stability”, with “no major departure from the trajectory set by the Conservatives”.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, congratulated the Labour leader on his party’s “convincing” election win.
“Ukraine and the United Kingdom have been, and will continue to be, reliable allies through thick and thin. We will continue to defend and advance our common values of life, freedom, and a rules-based international order,” Mr Zelensky said.
Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, was the first overseas leader to publicly congratulate his “friend”, in a message on X.
“We have a strong relationship between our two countries, but in Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner and so many others who I am very familiar with in the British Labour Party, I look forward very much to working with them. They have very similar views to us on a range of issues. I’m sure we’ll work closely on Aukus, where we worked very closely as well with the former government.”
Australia’s country’s biggest financial newspaper warned Mr Albanese that while his happiness for his “ideological bedfellow” will be genuine, victory for Sir Keir should make him wary.
“Starmer did not win because Britain was hankering for a social democratic government,” the Australian Financial Review wrote. “He won merely because he wasn’t the government.”
In Germany, Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, said he was “delighted” about the election victory of “our sister party in the UK”.
Sir Keir “will be a very good, very successful prime minister,” he said.
Germany’s Der Spiegel reported early on a “landslide” win for Labour that showed Britain’s “dissatisfaction” with the Conservatives.
“Many people have the impression that very little still works in the country, which has led to anger against the long-standing government,” it said.
“It threatens the end of the Tory Party as we know it.”
Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s Right-wing prime minister, was more circumspect and paid tribute to Rishi Sunak, with whom she was often pictured enjoying herself at international summits.
“I thank my friend Rishi Sunak for these years of intense cooperation and sincere friendship,” she said.
Corriere della Sera, the Italian daily newspaper, published a story lamenting “the long debacle of the Tories”, blaming their crushing defeat at the polls on “14 years of government which impoverished the United Kingdom”.
In a comment piece, the newspaper said: “The party of Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher comes out of this electoral contest with broken bones and it will take years to recover.”
Antonio Tajani, Italy’s foreign minister and deputy prime minister, meanwhile hailed Sir Keir as a latter-day Sir Tony Blair.
Although he comes from the centre-Right Forza Italia party founded by the late Silvio Berlusconi, Mr Tajani was fulsome in his praise. He described Sir Keir as a moderate and contrasted him with the “extreme” former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
In Spain, El País said on its front page that it had been a “historic triumph” for Labour. But its UK correspondent described Sir Keir as a “methodical and calculating” man who was considered by many to be “a robot, incapable of expressing even a minimal dose of charisma”.
Writing in El Mundo, Joaquim Coll, the historian, said Sir Keir could not be compared to Sir Tony in terms of “brilliance or popularity” but said the election result reflected the fallout from Brexit, which has left British society “poorer and deeply fractured”.
Charles Michel, the European Council president, congratulated Sir Keir on a “historic election victory” in Britain and said he looked forward to working with London under a Labour government.
He added that he would see Sir Keir at a European Political Community summit to be held in Britain on July 18 “where we will discuss common challenges, including stability, security, energy and migration”.
2024-07-05T07:20:52Z dg43tfdfdgfd