Donald Trump is officially returning to the White House today, and bringing quite the headache for Keir Starmer with him.
While the two men were both elected on a landslide last year – and will have to work together in the coming years – it is painfully clear to see they are not natural allies.
And while top ministers like foreign secretary David Lammy are hastily trying to talk up the incoming president, Starmer has already irked team Trump on multiple issues...
1. The UK ambassador to the US
Karen Pierce has served as the UK ambassador to the US since 2020 and has reportedly established a strong relationship with Trump’s team.
However, Starmer is trying to install Labour peer Peter Mandelson as the ambassador in Washington instead.
Mandelson is thought to be a less popular choice within Trump circles because of his perceived links to China having previously pushed for improving trade with Beijing.
He has also been a critic of Trump in the past, once dubbing him “little short of a white nationalist and racist”.
For a nominee to become a formal ambassador, the head of the state of country they are going to has to accept.
Sources also told The Independent at the weekend that team Trump would ideally like Labour to pull Mandelson and keep Pierce instead – but fear Starmer could also appoint someone “even worse” like London mayor Sadiq Khan.
2. The Chagos deal
Starmer wants to hand the archipelago in the Indian Ocean – which is currently a British Overseas Territory – to Mauritius, who have long claimed Britain stole the islands from them.
The PM had hoped to get the deal - which protects the US-UK military base at Diego Garcia for the next 99 years - across the line before Trump was sworn in, but eventually admitted defeat last week.
The new president, who is believed to be highly sceptical about the deal, will now be able to run the rule over it. And it’s not looking positive for Starmer.
The incoming US secretary of state Marco Rubio has already said giving the islands away would boost China’s military ambitions in the region and jeopardise US-UK defence.
3. Defence spending
Trump has long threatened to pull out of Nato unless other countries meet the mandatory target of spending 2% of their GDP on defence.
The UK already meets that goal and Labour has confirmed that it wants to increase it to 2.5%, although ministers have refused to offer any kind of timeline about when that might happen.
But now the president has started saying 5% would be a better target – which is much more than the UK can afford without blowing Rachel Reeves’ spending plans.
There’s also a fear that, unless Trump is happy, he will pull US support for Ukraine – leaving Europe vulnerable to Vladimir Putin.
4. Elon Musk
The tech billionaire has waged verbal warfare on Starmer since he was elected in July, calling him “two-tier Keir” and even warning that “civil war is inevitable” in the UK after last summer’s riots.
More recently, Musk has tried to pressure the government into calling for a fresh probe into child grooming gangs and dubbing the PM “evil” for not following his advice.
Unfortunately for the prime minister, Musk is set to play a key role in the Trump administration as the joint-head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The PM has therefore been pretty reluctant to get into a slanging match with Musk, but he did say two weeks ago that a “line had been crossed” after the tech magnate called safeguarding minister Jess Phillips a “rape genocide apologist who should be put in jail”.
Starmer warned against those who spread “lies and misinformation” in an apparent attack on Musk.
The tech magnate quickly hit back by claiming the “British legal system is not serving its people”. The row seems to have quietened down since then, but it remains to be seen how this conflict will impact UK-US relations more widely.
5. Labour activists
In one of the more embarrassing moments for Starmer, in the run-up to the US election it emerged that Labour activists had flown over to the States to campaign for the Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
While that is nothing unusual, Trump’s team accused Labour of “blatant foreign interference” – even though Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has been campaigning on the Republican’s behalf for years.
The Trump campaign then sent a letter to the US Federal Election Commission overnight and said this contact between the “far-left” Labour Party and the Democrats was akin to “illegal foreign national contributions”.
6. Past criticisms
At least 11 members of the current cabinet publicly criticised Trump before they were elected themselves last July.
In 2019, Starmer himself wrote on Twitter: “An endorsement from Donald Trump tells you everything you need to know about what is wrong with Boris Johnson’s politics and why he isn’t fit to be prime minister.”
Foreign secretary David Lammy called Trump a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath” in 2018, and said the Republcian is a “troll” who is “truly beneath contempt”.
Health secretary Wes Streeting wrote in 2017 as a backbencher: “Trump is such an odious, sad, little man. Imagine being proud to have that as your President.”
Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden has since claimed that Trump is “capable of looking past” such insults, and told the BBC in November: “If Donald Trump didn’t speak to people who have said things like that there’d be a lot of people he wouldn’t be speaking to.”