Downing Street may be making friendly overtures but the cabinet’s stomachs are in knots about the threats to the UK’s security and prosperity

Peas from the same pod they sure ain’t. No one is ever going to think that Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are twins who were separated at birth. In their temperaments, their worldviews and the values of the parties they lead, two human beings could not be less alike than the former prosecutor who heads Britain’s first Labour government in 14 years and the convicted felon whom Americans have returned to the White House for another four. When Trumpites are being polite about the Labour leader they call him a “liberal”; when they are feeling vituperative they brand him “far-left”. The animosity has been mutual. There’s a bulging catalogue of damnatory remarks about the president-elect by members of the Starmer cabinet.

Which is why Sir Keir felt compelled to lay on the flattery with a trowel when, according to the account from Number 10, he telephoned the American to extend his “ hearty congratulations ”. If that left many Labour people gagging on their breakfasts, they retched even harder when the prime minister went on to claim: “ We stand shoulder to shoulder in defence of shared values of freedom, democracy and enterprise.” He also employed a well-worn diplomatic cliche that one of our ambassadors to Washington banned his staff from using because he thought it fed delusional thinking about the extent of British influence over the US. “I know the special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come,” said the prime minister, even though he can’t be genuinely confident of any such thing. The foundations of transatlantic relations frequently shuddered during the first Trump term. Britain’s defence and foreign policy establishments are seized with a justifiably deep apprehension that the world will become an even more dangerous place during the sequel.