Danger, disaster, delusion and disaffection with The Donald…

How much could ‘The Trump Factor’ and the US president’s Iran War folly reshape the expected outcome of the May 7th elections in England, Wales and Scotland? A good question as even some right-wing UK papers and columnists beat a retreat from former Trump defender / admirer / cheerleader positions. Not least the Mail.

‘The longer this war goes on, the more Nigel Farage would be wise to distance himself from Trump’, the headline on Stephen Glover’s leader page op-ed (March 30). A shot across the bows from the paper that has been increasingly supportive of the Reform UK leader and gifting him guest columns galore?

Glover’s article begins: “Nigel Farage has a big problem and his name is Donald Trump. The leader of Reform genuinely likes and admires the American president. He counts himself as a friend and mourned a brief falling out with him a few years ago. He stood by Trump when he was being hauled through the courts by Democratic Party prosecutors.

“No doubt he enjoys being close to the most powerful man in the world. But if it were merely a marriage of convenience it could be easily broken. Farage’s ties with Trump go deep.

“The unpredictable president is waging a futile war that threatens to plunge the world into recession. His popularity is sagging in the US. It’s worse here. In a recent poll, 73% of Britons have an unfavourable view of Trump. These people include many prospective Reform voters. I suppose it’s just about possible that Trump will pull off a miracle, and bring a swift end to the war against Iran on terms that are favourable to the West. But it seems much more likely that we are all going to suffer for a long time for his rash and ill-considered action.

“Every time we go the petrol station or look at our latest gas bill, many of us will blame Trump. If there should be shortages in supermarkets, blame could turn to hatred. That wouldn’t be good for Farage, who is identified in the public mind as Trump’s leading British cheerleader. Some people may enjoy Trump’s sallies against Sir Keir Starmer, which are increasing in number. But almost no one appreciates his crass rudeness about the British armed forces – certainly not patriotic ex Labour voters thinking of voting Reform.”

Donald’s your problem, Nigel

“Does Nigel Farage realise the danger he is in? He has tempered his initial support, probably because he realises the war may end badly. At the beginning, he was enthusiastic, saying that although he was ‘incredibly nervous about intervening in foreign wars’, he believed ‘this was the right one’. In an interview with the New Statesman, he unwisely suggested that ‘Iran potentially poses a bigger danger than Putin to us’.

Glover also speculated that Reform’s recent slide in the polls means that “Farage would be foolish to dismiss the idea that his association with the increasingly disliked president is a significant factor”.

Regular readers of this column may recall that although (against my own instincts) I was early to predict Reform UK’s spectacular surge in last year’s local election and the distinct possibility of Nigel Farage becoming prime minister after the next general election, I also put forward the notion that the Trump relationship could prove the fatal ‘Achilles heel’ to Farage’s ultimate ambition. It was also something I focused on as a co-author of the book ‘Pandering to Populism’ published last year.

Interestingly, the Mail has also reported the finding this week by Luke Tryl, executive director of the More in Common think tank and polling organisation that his research reveals that “the biggest barrier to people voting Reform is Trump”.

Certainly the Greens, LibDems and the SNP plan to attack Reform and Farage personally deploying his ‘Trump buddy’ status in the run-up to May 7th ballot. With latest polling indicating that Reform’s earlier prospect of being the biggest party in the Welsh and Scottish elections no longer look realistic, how much the ‘Trump Connection’ played in that will be the subject of political / academic research down the line.

While Reform will undoubtedly still do well on May 7th, it won’t be as well as seemed certain before the Iran War erupted and – privately – some Reform strategists concede that the ‘Trump problem’ poses the biggest threat to their general election victory prospects.

Target Trump, Sir Keir

Meanwhile Labour strategists are urging Keir Starmer not to shy away from targeting Trump’s ‘war folly’ as his own best weapon to mitigate the scale of Labour’s own losses on May 7th. As one senior adviser put it to me: “Trump’s insults and idiocy are a bonus for Keir and he needs to maximise it and not be intimidated by threats around the ‘Special Relationship’ et al.” ‘Starmer banks on a ‘good war’ was how The Times political team headlined it last Saturday, suggesting the PM’s handling of the Iran crisis has seen off any leadership challenge to him in the wake of the May 7th result.

It was significant that the prime minister made his anti-war position and standing up to Trump a central plank of launching Labour’s own election campaign on Monday this week.

While in the Mail’s shifting Trumpian sands, Andrew Neil’s column last Saturday was headlined, ‘A daily stream of gibberish, obfuscation, and lies now emanate from the White House – bad at the best of times, disgraceful at a time of war.’

Neil’s column also included an apology / mea culpa: “Two days after the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, I wrote that, despite misgivings about the attack, I hoped the president would ‘stay the course’. But that was before it became obvious that there was no ‘course’ – no consistent and clear war aims, no plan to keep the strait open, no scheme to topple the regime as the bombs and missiles rained down, no exit plan.

“Trump has blundered into a war without any of the above, his options are now bleak; in a recent Reuters / Ipsos poll, a mere 7% of Americans supported a major deployment of troops on the ground. Behind closed doors – for now – leading Republicans in Congress are expressing mounting concern about what they now call Trump’s War’.

“At some stage, Trump will declare victory and go home. But it will be a Potemkin Village of a victory – artificial, constructed out of lies, misleading, of no lasting worth – an unsatisfactory end to an unnecessary escapade, leaving the Middle East in even worse shape than it was. The world will have to deal with the fallout from his folly for some time to come.”

War porn addiction?

Last Saturday’s Mail also carried a full-page article by The Spectator’s deputy editor, Freddy Gray, headlined, ‘Why insiders fear Trump’s spending too much time in his Situation Room watching ‘war porn’ that convinces him he’s winning’.

It certainly chimed with those grotesque TV press conference images of Trump and his even more grotesque, self-styled Secretary of War Pete Hegseth salivating on camera at the ‘obliterating’ death and devastation being inflicted in Iran. No matter that among the dead are those anti-regime, pro-democracy protesters the US president boasted of ‘rescuing’ – a pledge he has now effectively abandoned in search of some face-saving deal with the brutal regime’s latest reincarnation.

For many of us, those televised cabinet meetings where senior officials trot out constant tributes to Trump and his ‘greatness’ smacks of cowed cult worshippers

Also in last Saturday’s Mail, columnist Amanda Platell argued: “Why Charles must cancel his state visit to the White House NOW”… a response to Trump’s constant sniping at Britain over its refusal to obey his war demands. By Tuesday afternoon, Ms Platell was disappointed. Along with a growing number of MPs calling for cancellation. The Palace announced that “on government advice” the King and Queen’s April visit to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American Independence will go ahead this month. With King Charles due to deliver an historic address to the US congress.

Wanted: a diplomatic masterclass, your majesty

In the circumstance it will require a diplomatic masterclass. But it’s still the right decision. Trump has boasted so much about it that to have cancelled would have sparked his personal outrage and switched off the life support system of the ‘Special Relationship’ that is already languishing in intensive care,

While the Mail on Sunday’s arch-conservative commentator Peter Hitchens came up on March 22 with, “We can and must stand up to Donald Trump before this war wrecks the world”.

Last Saturday’s main Daily Mail leader headline was a stark ‘Flailing Trump and a world in chaos’. All this, lest we forget, from a paper that had gushingly welcomed Trump’s return to the White House at the time!

On Capitol Hill, my contacts on both sides of the political divide view the war as critical to the November mid-terms. With an increasing number of Republicans – including disillusioned MAGA loyalists – fearful it will cost them both houses. While the Democrats see it as their passport to an outcome that renders Trump a lame duck POTUS. Some Capitol Hill Democrats are determined to press for a criminal ‘insider trading’ probe into the hundreds of millions of dollars made on crypto currency sites shortly before the president made market sensitive announcements. It has sparked questions over whether any associates of Trump’s inner circle are among those who made fortunes. But as the sites involved trade on anonymity, identifying profiteers would pose a hugely difficult challenge.

Chill on The Hill

The prospect of Trump’s narcissistic personality leading him into a politically toxic boots on the ground intervention to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz, and even Iran’s buried nuclear material, has sent a cross-party chill across The Hill. In the knowledge that it would be a fiercely difficult military challenge and inevitably involve the return of many US servicemen in body bags – an unacceptable price for US to pay in the court of public opinion.

This week, former Foreign Secretary William Hague might well prove correct in his Times column arguing, “Trump’s Iran folly risks becoming irreversible… the threat to send in US ground forces will only compound mistakes that have handed advantage to Russia and China.”

In The Times on March 27 the normally Trump simpatico conservative commentator Gerard Baker’s regular column was headlined ‘Trump’s finding he can’t turn back the tide…Unlike Canute, US president believed his powers knew no bounds but Iran is showing the limits of his monarchical style’.

Monarchical style? That certainly struck a chord with me. Regular readers of this column may recall that both before and after his last election victory, I argued that Trump (who I once knew well personally) would operate his second term like an absolute monarch surrounded by a court of sycophants. Typical headline on 12/11/24: ‘Enter the Age of ‘King’ Donald the All Powerful?’ While pointing out that ‘all-powerful autocrats’ tend to reach a sell-by date.

No Kings protests

Only last weekend, several million anti-Trump Americans took part in more than 3,000 ‘NO KINGS’ protest rallies across the country, including New York, Washington DC, Minneapolis, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver and Nashville.

Fast forward to this Monday when the world’s media tried to make sense of the US president’s Truth Social post suddenly claimed the US was making ‘great progress’ in negotiating with a ‘NEW AND MORE REASONABLE REGIME’ in Iran, although no one has any idea of who he claims to be talking to.

The same post claimed that if his ‘deal’ fell through, he would end the war by ‘completely obliterating’ all of Iran’s electricity plants, oil wells and Kharg Island oil centre unless Iran reopened the Hormuz Strait. His blood curdling threat also included destroying Iran’s desalination plants (a war crime). That sent another collective shiver down the spines of America’s Gulf allies in the knowledge Iran would retaliate targeting their own desalination centres. Such is the importance of desalination for providing drinking water across the region it would potentially kill far more people than all the bombs and missiles have done so far.

The bizarre post inevitably begged the question whether Trump is behaving like a mad man as some form of calculated bluff or whether he is now desperate and genuinely dangerously deluded. It certainly reinforced the idea that this is a POTUS in search of an ‘off-ramp’ but without any clear plan for achieving it without humiliation. Later, Trump claimed he could end the war within a couple of weeks without a deal or control of the Hormuz Strait and still be the great victor. Go figure?

Oil over now, Mr President?

Come Tuesday and Trump was in even more bellicose mood, lashing out again at the UK and other NATO allies in a Truth Social post, telling them to “go get your own oil” from the Strait of Hormuz. Tossing in, “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us.” Another sign the war is far from going the way Trump wants. It clearly means nothing to the Trump brain that he started this war (manipulated by Netanhyahu) without consulting his European and Gulf allies and without consulting the US Congress. But the consultation bypass didn’t prevent Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling US journalist on Tuesday that America should “re-examine our relationship with NATO”.

(Bluff or not? That was the question on Wednesday after Trump told the Daily Telegraph he is “seriously considering pulling America out of NATO.” In reality, he would face cross party congressional opposition to that and if the mid-terms go as badly as polls predict, he would be powerless to do so.)

That outburst turbocharged Wednesday’s UK front pages. ‘Go get your own oil, Trump tells UK in new outburst against allies’ (Guardian); ‘Go get your own oil, Trump tells Britain’(Times); ‘TRUMP’S TAUNT EXPOSES A PM WITHOUT A PLAN’ (Daily Mail seizing opportunity’ to implicate Starmer too); ‘THIS IS OIL YOUR FAULT..WORLD PAYS FOR TRUMP LUNACY’ (Mirror); ‘TRUMP TELLS UK GO GET YOUR OWN OIL (Express); ‘I started it… you finish it’ (Metro) and a personal favourite, ‘THEY THINK IT’S OIL OVER’(Daily Star).

The ‘i’ opts for a different angle with, ‘King sent to US on mission to salvage a century of friendship’. That reflects the escalating controversy over the King and Queen’s Trump-pleasing US trip. Critics interpreting the Palace reference to ‘government advice’ as code for the monarch will be doing his public duty somewhat unenthusiastically. Worth noting in topsy-turvy Trumpworld that in quick succession on his Truth Social feed the president was denigrating Britain before adopting an adulatory tone over the Royal visit confirmation.

Keyboard warrior-in-chief

Most bizarre of all, perhaps, is witnessing The Great Narcissist’s addiction to conducting a global-impacting war and geopolitics via impulsive keyboard explosions on his personal platform. Often without warning to his own closest aides and military commanders. But it’s also in character for a man who perceives himself as the star of an epic TV drama being played out to an engrossed worldwide audience hanging on his every word.

Gallows humour is always valuable in times of war and (courtesy of the Financial Times) I loved this one. ’What’s the difference between the Iran and Vietnam wars? Trump knew how to get out of Vietnam’. A wickedly funny reference to the infamous bone spurs in his feet that enabled the young Donald to avoid the Vietnam draft but has never handicapped him on his beloved gold courses.

The Mandelson / McSweeney timebomb ticks on

Inevitably, the combination of Trump’s erratic behaviour and the opinion polls has led to right-wing British papers and opposition politicians dialling down their attacks on Keir Starmer over the war. But they’ve been gifted an alternative weapon to turn up the heat on the PM – the ongoing Mandelson saga and more particularly, the Curious Case of Morgan McSweeney’s ‘stolen’ mobile phone.

To be fair, it isn’t just the right-wing press questioning Starmer’s continuing Mandelson migraine and the legitimate questions posed by the McSweeney phone issue. Like when he reported it to the police, he didn’t mention he was the PM’s chief of staff or that his nicked mobile contained sensitive messages with Mandelson following his sacking as our US ambassador over his links to the paedophile billionaire, Jeffrey Epstein.

Or that he gave the police the wrong street name for the robbery which made checking CCTV footage a waste of time. The Met is now reinvestigating and looking for possible footage from the right area although that may be Mission Impossible given the robbery took place on October 20th last year.

Little wonder, then, that conspiracy theorists have been working overtime and headlines like, ‘A VERY CONVENIENT THEFT’ spread over a 2-page Daily Mail ‘Special Report’ by investigative journalist Guy Adams on March 26th, or political commentator Dan Hodges column headline in the Mail, ‘Evidence from the Mandelson scandal is vanishing on an industrial scale –but voters won’t fall for it’.

Certainly inconvenient timing for Keir Starmer with the pending release of thousands more Mandelson appointment documents and messages after parliament’s Easter Recess and possibly before the May 7th elections.

Keir’s cri de coeur

Personally, I couldn’t help viewing the PM’s interview with Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby in which he described “beating himself up” daily over his “Mandelson mistake” as more cri de coeur than a normal prime ministerial statement. Rigby wasn’t wrong saying it “was Starmer like I’d never seen him before” but that didn’t spare him from much media mockery from all directions.

One Starmer-sympathetic senior Labour MP put it to me this way: “There’s no pretending it wasn’t a judgement disaster by the PM himself on Mandelson whatever blame attaches to Morgan McSweeney’s role. There’s no pretending either we aren’t going to take a serious beating at the ballot box on May 7th. But the best hope is that the damage is limited if voters figure Keir’s Mandelson bungle matters less than him standing up to Trump over the president’s immeasurably greater bungle over the Iran war and the British public paying the heavy price for it. The more people are reminded of Farage’s Trump buddy record and his past admiration for Putin the better for us.”

Stop press:

After all the advance hype, President Trump’s 20-minute TV national address from the White House on the Iran War turned out to be something of an anti climax.

Like watching a fading star running through his familiar hits (and misses) repertoire. “We have all the cards… Tonight, I’m pleased to say our core strategic objectives are nearing completion… Our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield – victories like few people have ever seen before… We are going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We are going to bring them back to the Stone Age.”

Little or no mention of the ceasefire he'd earlier boasted Iran is “begging for” (the Iranian regime deny it) or the peace / surrender deal he’s frequently bragged was “imminent”. Plenty of targeting US allies who lacked “the courage” to join his war and will now have to sort out the Strait of Hormuz crisis themselves and on it went, loaded with plenty of Trumpian self-praise.

It was an event clearly staged to try and justify his war and its economic damage and counter his sliding poll ratings. But the initial reaction was for the global oil price to surge upwards again and the stock market to take a downward hit. The next set of US opinion polls will make interesting Capitol Hill reading as the mid-term elections grow closer.

The initial reaction of many of my American friends was to say they were more impressed and enthused by the launch of Nasa's Artemis 11 manned moon rocket than Trump’s ego trip / reputational relaunch bid.

The Trump address was too late for the Thursday print editions of most UK newspapers, but the president certainly figured on several front pages anyway. Focused on his threat to quit NATO (first broken to the Daily Telegraph online on Wednesday morning, *see above).

‘Furious Trump threatens to withdraw US from NATO’ (Times); ‘Trump ‘absolutely’ considering taking US out of NATO alliance’ (Guardian); ‘NOW TRUMP GOES TO WAR ON NATO' (Mail); ‘Star-spangled spanner in the works’ (Metro) and The Telegraph following up its own online scoop in print with ‘Trump: US could quit NATO’.

What disappointed the global markets and millions of ordinary people bearing the cost of Trump’s War was that it didn’t set out a firm timetable for the US ending its involvement. Neither was there any solid commitment to no US boots on the ground in Iran. As one US market analyst put it to me: “With Trump’s propensity for changing his mind, and no definite withdrawal timetable set out in his big speech – which was what we were hoping for – the risk the war could drag on well beyond two or three weeks remains high. And two people who would be only too happy if it did are called Putin and Netanyahu.”