The Observer view: Keir Starmer’s answer to Donald Trump shows principle, not pandering

It is not this newspaper’s job to warn the man who donated £12m to Reform UK that he will get poor value for his money – but the signs are that he will. From his base in Thailand, Christopher Harborne has sent enough cash to Reform to change the course of elections across England, Scotland and Wales in May, with consequences that could reshape British politics from the top down. In the short term that may look like success, but if Harborne’s long game is to get Nigel Farage into Downing Street, it is not clear that any amount of money is capable of achieving that.

Keir Starmer has become a byword for political unpopularity but Farage runs him close in every poll. Farage has not tried to remodel himself, even though the British public made up its mind about him long ago. Year after year his favourability ratings remain deeply negative. The choices he has made this week, and the contrast with Starmer’s, will ensure that they stay that way.

Farage let it be known he was flying to Florida to dine with Donald Trump to press his case that returning the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, while leasing back the airbase at Diego Garcia, is “not far short of an act of treachery”. In days gone by, the same epithet might have been levelled at a politician seeking personal advantage at a potential cost to the national interest.

Voters who have not always known who they want to vote for, know exactly who they want to vote against. Why did all the money Reform threw at the Caerphilly byelection in Wales not win the day? Why did the party underperform against its own expectations in Gorton and Denton? In large part, the answer is Nigel Farage.

The existential question for Reform is that it has become a party that believes it cannot flourish without Farage – but cannot win with him. Its response to that unsolvable problem has been to attempt to build a broader team around its leader. But the initiative falls flat. Too many of the ex-Conservative recruits are exactly the old-school politicians that Reform voters are desperate to get away from, and if there is one thing people know about Farage, it is that he is not a team player.

Meanwhile, Starmer has reaped some rewards for being authentically himself. His decision to deny US forces the use of British bases for an attack on Iran was principled not political. It chimed with the popular mood – even before the full economic consequences of the war in Iran have been felt.

Ten years ago this week, Boris Johnson was warning Barack Obama to keep out of the Brexit debate, fearing the US president might advise the British people to remain in the European Union. Ironically, a decade later, Donald Trump has done more than anyone to remind the UK of the value of Europe.

When the US president attacked Iran last weekend, Starmer wasn’t on the phone to Washington, but to Paris and Berlin. Brexit has not only failed in the terms that Farage promised, it has also been expensive. For economic reasons as well as geopolitical ones, Starmer is sensibly bringing the UK back into the European family of nations.

His legalism is easily explained as just temperament and training. But the UK’s national interests lie in the defence of international law. It underpins the trade and finance that sustain the economy; it defends the interests of smaller countries, UK included, from the realpolitik of the strongman; it plays to the strength of one of the UK’s competitive advantages – lawyers and courts; and it is historic – the land of the Magna Carta should defend the rule of law globally.

Britain’s approach to the world has been clearer this week than it has been in months. It is pro-European, pro-rule of law. Starmer is both these things. Rather than pointlessly pandering to Trump, he would do well to keep on saying so.

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