A minister today used JD Vance and Elon Musk’s previous criticisms of Donald Trump to explain away Labour’s past comments about the president-elect.
The Republican won his second term in the White House on Wednesday, four years after his first polarising presidency ended.
That has led to historical comments about Trump by senior Labour figures who are now in government to be dredged up again.
The now-foreign secretary David Lammy called him a “woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” in 2018, while now-PM Keir Starmer criticised Boris Johnson after he won an endorsement from Trump.
But cabinet office minister Pat McFadden defended his party’s awkward past by pointing out that even those now closest to Trump – like vice-president elect Vance and tech tycoon Musk – also slammed him.
On Sky News this morning, presenter Wilfred Frost asked McFadden if Labour “regrets this anti-Trump sentiment”.
McFadden replied: “There’s been a lot of things that have been said over the years, but not just here in the UK, including in the US.
“If you look at what vice president [elect] JD Vance said about Trump, he mused whether this was going to be another Richard Nixon or America’s Hitler.
“And that’s not held him back from being the running mate.
“Elon Musk, as well, advised Trump to walk off into the sunset a couple of years ago, and he’s become Trump’s biggest backer in business.”
He also pointed out that both of these new governments in the US and the UK have to work together for the next four years.
But Frost asked again about “regret” and pointed to social media posts from Labour’s head of operations about providing accommodation for party activists who flew to the US to door-knock for Kamala Harris.
Trump’s campaign then called it “blatant foreign election interference”.
But McFadden maintained that it was “such an important alliance” between the countries, which is “more important than all of those things” Frost mentioned.
“I think those shared values and interests are more important than some tweet from however many years ago,” the minister added.
So Frost changed tact and said: “Is it quite big and commendable of Donald Trump to forgive and forget that these comments were made in the past?”
But McFadden side-stepped that question. He just said the congratulatory phone call between the PM and the president last night, and their dinner together in the States in September were “positive recent signs” of their good relationship.
He added: “If president-elect Trump chose not to speak to everybody who said something about him in the past, you wouldn’t have the vice-president elect you have.
“I think he can look past these things.”
The minister also said he wanted Sky’s viewers to be clear where Labour stands right now: “As a friend and ally to America, and that will be enduring in the next few years with the new president.”