How welcome is Trump in Britain?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:43So that's one welcome for President Trump at Windsor Castle, and this is another. Say it loud, say it clear, Donald Trump's not welcome here. Say it loud, say it clear. and number 10 will be holding their breath, hoping that this week, with President Trump in town, passes without too much incident. But what do we in Britain really think of President Trump now? And how does it all feed in to Keir Starmer's worsening and deepening political problems? Welcome to The News Agents.

1:19The News Agents. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And last night, Donald Trump touched down at Stansted, lucky boy, made his way by helicopter to Winfield House, to the US Embassy here. And he will have missed the projection by the activist group led by Donkeys of a huge picture of himself with Jeffrey Epstein that was emblazoned on the side of St. George's Chapel in Windsor. One of many pictures, one of many moments that groups like that are using to try and draw attention to the man whom we have just granted an unprecedented second state visit to. Yeah, and this obviously this state visit was offered early on in Trump's second presidency.

2:07It was offered as a means of cementing Starmer's personal relationship with Trump. We know it's something that Trump coveted. We know that he's coming here not because like a normal American president, he has a sort of list of things he wants to discuss with the British prime minister, not because there's a huge sort of set of policy discussions. Of course, some of that inevitably will happen. But we know with Trump, he literally said it himself as he was on on the way here. He said there's going to be great pictures. And this is about great pictures. Anything which potentially disrupts those great pictures is going to be a problem for him.

2:37But obviously it's taking place and no one could have predicted this at the time. Maybe some people might have done. But, you know, it is ended up taking place at what might be one of the worst possible moments for both sides. Trump is leaving a country which is being convulsed by the political repercussions of the terrible appalling Charlie Kirk assassination about the fact that we talked to the show on yesterday. Trump's administration is using it as a moment to suppress dissent within the United States. that's also going to potentially have free speech kind of questions that are going to come up here.

3:10But for Starmer as well, what a moment to have Trump here in the midst of this latest twist in the Epstein scandal, where literally all three elements of this, the British royal family, the Labour Party via Mandelson and Trump himself, are all connected with this Epstein affair, which potentially could overshadow the entire thing. And at the same time, as you say, Emily, where Trump remains for various different reasons, very unpopular in the country. Well, joining us now is more in commons, Luke Trill, friend of the podcast, as we like to say. Luke, it's lovely to see you here in person. Give us a sense.

3:46I mean, I'm sorry we haven't put out quite the same amount of bunting and fanfare as Trump gets today. But what is the sense around where we, the British public, are in terms of our relationship now with Trump? So I'd say a couple of things. I think at the top line, it is important to remember that Trump is very unpopular in the UK. There isn't a MAGA constituency in the UK. In fact, his net positivity rating amongst the British public is minus 41. So he is deeply underwater. that is with Labour voters, Liberal Democrat voters, particularly actually Conservative voters have shifted against him since his inauguration, and then Reform voters more split.

4:37So those people who voted for Reform last year in the general election tend to have a positive opinion of him. Their newer voters, who as we've talked about before, tend to be more moderate, less ideological, have a negative opinion of Donald Trump. So that's the kind of top line. But then what I think is interesting is underneath that is when we talk about Donald Trump in focus groups, the main thing which people focus on is it all just seems a bit frightening. You know, I will have people saying, I don't know what that madman in the White House is going to do next. Do they actually say madman?

5:09They say madman. They say, you know, in fact, I've had people say, I don't know what that madman in the Kremlin or the White House is going to do next. there is this sense that he is out of control and that Britain is almost a bystander, sort of being buffeted by what Trump does. The one area he will get some praise is you will get people who say, you know, literally say, I really don't like the guy, but the one thing I do like is he does what he says he'll do. And so you get some kudos for that, but the idea of a big Trumpian constituency in the UK isn't there and actually if you ask people the top reason that they wouldn't vote for Reform UK it is Nigel Farage's closeness to Donald Trump.

5:51Fascinating so on that where does it leave Keir Starmer because obviously this whole thing is about trying to portray a closeness and an understanding and a good relationship with Trump I mean do people value that in our Prime Minister or do they wish that we sort of stuck two fingers up? So Brits are quite pragmatic actually on this one. So they thought the state visit should go ahead or plurality, thought the state visit should go ahead. Even though it's unprecedented, even though we've never offered it to any other US president before. Even though it's unprecedented, they still think better to do it.

6:27And again, when we've spoken to people, you know, they will say, the folks where we've played clips from when Starmer gives him the letter and people have sort of thought it was cringe, but like, oh, he's got to do it, hasn't he? They tend not to think politicians should boycott the state dinner. So we asked about that because obviously Davey is, although Liberal Democrat voters back what Ed Davey is doing. But this is the real kicker that when we ask them, you know, how can we best influence Trump by standing up to him, by sucking up to him? We don't use that word in the polling. Or will it make no difference?

6:59The overwhelming majority say it's not going to make a blind bit of difference. So that's really pragmatic. Yeah. We should talk a bit more about Starmer and sort of where he is with the public at the moment. just while we're talking about Trump and kind of Trump's politics and its popularity in the UK, obviously we've been talking a lot this week about kind of a kind of MAGA agenda, right? With Elon Musk, Tommy Robinson, sort of more widely, you know, in the wake of Charlie Kirk's appalling assassination, the sort of politics that he has spout. I mean, obviously it feels to me like one of the central features of British politics right now is partly because we are all still taking our cue so much from X, which is and i'm talking news organizations now which is dominated by a kind of MAGA radical right kind of thinking and a lot of the people on there sort of present that as if people like tommy robinson and others are speaking for the british public what's the actual truth about this oh it's just tommy robinson is massively unpopular with the british public he is way underwater with the British public.

8:01But the British public do not have time for Robinson's bigotry, racism. And I think there is a danger that people are conflating frustration with issues around immigration and particularly asylum hotels. And I will say it's rare now to do a focus group where asylum hotels don't come up unprompted, which is a big shift, the extent to which it comes up. But they're conflating that with backing Robinson's agenda. And we actually asked over the weekend, we asked about the march. And what was interesting, what came back on the march was, whether people had a positive opinion or a negative opinion, is people were split, which I thought was, you know, quite surprising.

8:41It was about 30 % who said they had a positive opinion, 36 % negative. When we then asked those with a positive opinion what it was they liked about the march, just 11 % said support for Tommy Robinson and his views. So that's 11 % of the 30%. So you're talking, you know, tiny numbers here. And what did the rest? For most, it was wanting to stand up for free speech and immigration were the two issues that they said. But it wasn't an endorsement of Robinson's agenda. And I think there's a danger that some of the commentariat, some of those on the right, but also I think actually a danger from some of those on the left that they lump everyone into this kind of, There's a danger of it almost becoming self-fulfilling, that you've got this bigger bulk backing Robinson than there is.

9:27So you see 150, maybe 1 ,000 people and you say they are all Tommy Robinson fans. Exactly. Does the question around free speech, which has obviously become such a kind of central bit of kind of the rights thinking and the online rights thinking, does that resonate? Do people feel that there are genuine infringements on free speech? So when you ask people, is free speech under threat? Actually, you get quite a big majority that say yes. but when you talk to people about free speech in focus groups it's clear we have a very different conception of it it isn't that u.s style first amendment absolutism and people will often say things in focus groups like well you know if you say something in the workplace which isn't allowed in the workplace you should be disciplined for that you know you should you know people have a preference for being kind generous if you look at our segments for instance the rooted patriots that quite socially conservative groups say we need to tackle hate speech and offensive speech.

10:22But I think it's this sense that sometimes the policing goes a bit far. So it's not it's definitely not US style. It's a bit like saying political correctness gone mad from the 1990s. Exactly. That doesn't mean they back what people are saying. So when we asked, do you think politicians should associate with Lucy Connolly? Just 18 percent of the public said that politicians should do that. so that you can have maybe a debate about sentencing and was it right? And that's probably about a 35 % proposition. But it's under one in five who actively want politicians embracing people like Lucy Connolly as a hero.

10:59Going back to Starmer, where is he now in the polling? It feels like there's been a slew of stuff. I mean, there's a YouGov poll out today suggesting he's now at his lowest rating ever, ever since he became Labour leader. There was some catastrophic polling, I think, from Wales yesterday from ITV. Wales showing Labour in third place, trailing way behind Plaid and reform. It feels like this is getting worse. It's definitely getting worse. So our approval tracker this week had Starmer's approval on minus 46. So that's a proportion of people who say he's doing a good job, minus those who think he's doing a bad job.

11:32That was a new low. How does that compare to Johnson? Yeah, or just do it with the other party leaders as well. yeah so kemi badenok is in the minus mid-20s i think she's minus 23 or around there almost popular um well and then you've got basically what you then get is davy and farage duking it out for not most popular but least unpopular who tend to be around kind of minus five minus seven ish there and they tend to oscillate so starma is way down there the one thing i would say is uh kemi Bedenock and Ed Davey in particular have very high don't knows as well. And comparing Starmer therefore to other prime ministers who have been at the end of the day at their worst so Johnson before he went, May before he went, Sunak, how does he compare Truss?

12:20That is the territory we are in so he now I think Starmer is now below where Rishi Sunak was his lowest post his election defeat. You're in similar territory to Johnson. Truss, we actually... You barely had time to poll, of course. We didn't actually have a tracker during that. The results came back and it was too late. But looking at other pollsters where you see that sort of vertical line of approval, I think Keir Starmer is still ahead of where... Well, that's something. And what about on the qualitative side? In focus groups, what's your sense of... I mean, because the truth is, right, Starmer's never been popular.

12:54He's never been a popular political figure even when he won the election. He was not an especially popular leader of the opposition by comparison to Cameron or Blair. So what are people sort of saying to you about him? Well, I mean, you're entirely right. And you remember when we were doing focus groups for the pods in the run up to the election, it was a kind of lukewarm is probably strong embrace of Starmer. It was a sense of we just need to get the Tories out. It has flipped and it flipped last summer into after winter fuel into not just kind of meh, but like genuine frustration. I think where we are getting to now, and I think this is the danger point, is when I ask about how Starmer's doing, it's not just anger.

13:37You get some people laughing. And that is the stage it got to at the end of Johnson and the stage it got to at the end of Sunak as well. And it's that stage when people start to... Well, see him as hapless. Yes, exactly. They're no longer, you know, I mean, lots of people are angry, but there's a group of people who are no longer angry. They're just like, I mean, clearly, you know, this isn't working. And I think it is going to need now something big to turn that around. Why do you think that is? Because, I mean, you know, sort of looking, you could say, and maybe there is something about political expectation here.

14:09I mean, actually, Starmer didn't come in and Labour actually didn't come in, you could argue, promising the world. Actually, their promises were actually quite modest. Yes, quite modest. It's going to be terrible. Yes, exactly. It's 14 months. It's not a terribly long time since the election. Is that a reflection of how badly Labour has screwed it up? Or is it something wider that's going on about our political culture? Because there hasn't been, I mean, there have been clearly mistakes, but it's hard to necessarily point to something as there was with Johnson and Partygate or Truss, for obvious reasons, or whatever.

14:41Yeah, it doesn't affect people personally in the same way that Partygate did or, you know, Truss's mortgage. I mean, losing Angela Rayner or losing Peter Maddelson or losing your advisor, They're not things that individually hurt you as a voter. Most people don't even notice. No. So what do you think it is? So I think it's two things. I think it's sort of perversely our political cycles have become both longer and shorter. I'm thinking about that. So they've become longer in the sense that I think, look, you know, I think it's entirely reasonable for them to have thought this. Lots of people thought Starmer coming in, he'd be starting with a blank slate with the electorate.

15:19And that would mean that actually after 14 months, people would say you've only got 14 months. People aren't viewing it like that. They're seeing it as this has gone on since 2008. And so it's not 14 months. It's 17 years of us not getting any better, being told about tough decisions. I do think he made it worse for himself with that Rose Garden speech, because a lot of people were like, oh, my God, it's going to be more of the same. So you've got that. But at the same time, political cycles have become shorter in the sense that the electorate is understandably impatient. They think life in Britain has been hard for too long and they very quickly move.

15:56And then I think there's a third thing, which is what you would expect to happen normally. And I think, you know, clearly this isn't Starmer's fault is people would go, well, look, you know, this government is doing some stuff that I don't like. they're taking a while but you know the other lot are the ones that got us into this mess and so you know what let's um you know we'll give Labour some time which is what Cameron enjoyed yeah exactly that it's exactly the 2020 actually that hasn't happened you've got reform there ready to say okay you're disappointed with Labour you're disappointed with the Tories here we are here we are to offer you something totally different and I do think you know I think there is a view you can take that it some of the assessment of kia starma is quite unfair i do think that the winter fuel thing i'm sorry to keep coming back to it just did untold damage to them it's extraordinary isn't it when you consider how in the grand scheme of things you could argue and obviously there'll be people who maybe disagree with this assessment but you could argue you know a relatively small amount of money for a group of people that you could argue were already quite well supported by the welfare state and it and yet it metastasized it become utterly toxic but it was sort of the way they did right they announced it into nowhere it wasn't in the manifesto and then it was announced what months before the budget and it was august i think wasn't it it came to define them and this sense that they were targeting different groups and then when you got to the budget people then went oh and now they're going after small businesses and farmers and they're probably about to repeat that cycle yeah now and the big mistake and again i think we've talked about, I just think was boxing themselves in on not reversing the hunt.

17:33On Starmer and Labour, I mean, you and I talked about this, I think, you know, two or three months ago. Until very recently, my sort of assessment had been that this talk of removing Starmer or Starmer going would be way more counterproductive, because it would just feed that, you know, the one thing you could say about Starmer or the government is that it appears relatively stable, at least they're not getting into the sort of Tory kind of psychodrama kind of endless swapping of leaders which just sort of appeared, made them look incompetent and feckless. But I suppose maybe it feels to me that the conversation among Labour MPs, who I think probably largely shared that analysis, even though there's not a lot of love for Starmer, feels like it is starting to turn on the basis that maybe the calculus is shifting, that yeah, that would look bad, but actually Starmer is becoming so unpopular that that would be better than sticking with him.

18:19What do you think about that? What do you think about where the calculus is? I do think that chaos risk is a real issue, right? and the biggest beneficiary of greater political chaos will be reformed because people will think, as they sort of expressed actually about Rayner's departure when we spoke to them, oh, look, the Tories chopped and changed all the time. Labour are now doing the same. System doesn't work. System doesn't work. And also, even if I'm worried reform are untested, they can't be as bad as those other two. Then they're by strongly. You know, they may as well. I may as well try it because, you know, how bad can it be?

18:53So that is a big risk. and if Labour were to change leaders they would basically have to be confident that this was a May 2019 moment when Theresa May announces she's stepping down and Johnson almost comes in as almost an entirely new Conservative Party. The risk is I think the more likely situation is it would be in October 2022 which is Sunak comes in it looks like moving the desk chairs it looks like moving around more chaos and it doesn't move. Because for Labour because for Labour right now the kind of obvious Johnson parallel would be Andy Burnham. Like he's the one guy who not only is reasonably popular in a country, but also could genuinely come in and go, I'm a clean skin.

19:33I've had nothing to do with this government. Change, change, change. But there's, unlike in 2019, there is no obvious mechanism for him to get into Parliament because the only way of him getting into Parliament was if it's time to agree to him to come into Parliament, which he's not going to want. So we should explain there's this one Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, who's thinking of stepping down for health reasons, which would free up a seat in the Greater Manchester area for a by-election. But for that to happen, presumably Keir Stam has got to say, yes, Andy Burnham, you can go for that. He might as well say, hey, Andy Burnham, do you want to come and have my job?

20:06Here's the front door. Would it be Burnham? A, two questions, I suppose. A, do you think it actually is irrecoverable for Stam and I? Is he in that sort of Johnson 19 position? And B, would it have to be Burnham or is there anybody else who could actually make a qualitative difference to Labour's position. I think the shift that has happened in recent weeks is more members of the public are starting to think it's irrecoverable, but the public are not generally the best judges of their future behaviour. What do I mean by that? If things turn around, if life starts to feel a bit easier, if energy bills feel less painful, then I think if reform implodes, the government could turn it around.

20:46And I think if I were the government, I would be thinking, the best day that I for the government in terms of a focus group I did was after Scunthorpe was when they took the steel into government control because people saw problem government acting and it was the entire opposite of I think what frustrates people more than any individual this sense of government being impotent and they need more Scunthorpe moments I think and I think that is how they get out of this if that doesn't happen and he can't turn it around it is hard to see many people in the current cabinet who at this moment in time would look like something different enough.

21:23I mean, West Streeting is a great communicator, but of course he'd have to win a Labour leadership election there. I think people have high hopes for people like Shabana Mahmood, but she's got no cut through with the public yet. That might change. When we tested potential leadership candidates and said, would they do a better job than Starmer, the only one where the public were more likely than not to say they'd do a better job was Andy Burnham. But as you say, he has to get into Parliament. And even if Keir Starmer lets him stand, I would be in this environment fighting a by-election, even a very popular mayor.

21:56They might just lose the whole seat. They might lose the seat. And then that's Burnham's career toast. But if he did it. But if he did it. High risk, high reward. And he's, you know, and look. Where have we heard that phrase recently? I think at the moment there are very few Labour seats where I would be outside of inner cities and student towns where I would be confident that they could hold a by-election because by-elections tend to have bigger swings than the national average. The one person who I think could win a by-election simply because when we go to Greater Manchester and talk to people, he genuinely is popular.

22:29He's seen to have made a success of that morality. And he wins every ward in Greater Manchester, even the Tory wards in his election. Exactly. If there is someone who can win it, it's him. And I think that's an interesting test there. Is he the person who can take on reform? Luke, it's been brilliant. Fascinating. Thanks. Thanks for coming in. And of course, there will be coverage of every twist and turn of Donald Trump's state visit on LBC. Listen now by using our free Global Player app.

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24:03The News Agents. So something that has been continuing and we've been keeping an eye on this week and we wanted to do is the situation in Gaza. Once again, we've seen the IDF, the Israeli government, continuing to step up its offensive in Gaza. And it is clearly going to be or there will be a big expectation from some Labour MPs that Starmer will use this state visit to try and get some sort of policy outcome on Gaza from Trump. It seems quite unlikely that will happen, but Labour MPs will definitely want it to happen. It's yet another potential political fissure point between the two men, because it is something certainly where the British Labour Party and the American Republican Party at this moment could not be further apart.

24:46Yeah, and things have got a lot worse in Gaza. Israel yesterday launched its ground operation in Gaza City. Tanks and infantry brigades are entering the ruins there. And the Israeli defence minister has vowed to strike with an iron fist. thousands now fleeing gaza city so we're going to speak now to a labor mp one of two who tried to get into israel both doctors to look at the medical facilities and they were banned from entering dr simon offered just tell us about the circumstances surrounding that what actually happened so me me and another actually another doctor as well peter prinsley who's an ent surgeon I'm a GP.

25:27We had been invited to visit healthcare facilities in the West Bank by medical aid for Palestinians, a charity. And so we had flown to Amman, and we were going to get into Israel across the Jordan, so over land. And when we got to Israel, after about three hours of shenanigans involving the consulate and the foreign office, actually, they then issued us with a legal statement saying, the above mentioned individual will be removed from Israel. And then we were led to a bus by a man who held our passports. And when we were in the bus going back to Jordan, we got given our passports. So that was the sort of bones of what happened.