01 Apr 2026 6 min read

The One Where Trump and Starmer Take a Break

Did you ever see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory? The 2005 one with Johnny Depp (I know, I know, the first one's better, shush). Anyways, there's a scene in that movie that I always hated. It's the bit where the spoiled little girl Veruca Salt gets overpowered by squirrels and dragged into a garbage chute to be incinerated. I remember feeling this pit in my stomach when I watched it as a kid. My dad always used to call me a spoiled brat (his fault, not mine), and we were both pale with long brown hair, so in my mind we were practically identical. I used to think about the squirrels at night, how they would feel crawling on me, digging their nails in; how I would slide along the ground and then tip and fall and keep falling. I didn't think she deserved it, the cruelty of it.

She definitely did deserve some comeuppance though, at least, more than the poor kid whose only real crime was being fat in a literal chocolate eating competition. Veruca Salt is described as being, "cold, direct, manipulative, egocentric and arrogant", which is a pretty harsh, albeit fair, assessment. She gets whatever she wants, and if anyone or anything tries to get in the way of that, she lashes out in anger and incredulity. Her fate in the end is a culmination of her assumed entitlement to the capitulation of everyone around her to her whims, and her unwavering belief in her being right, in the face of all guidance to the contrary.

In other words, her greed and self-importance was her literal downfall.

I think you see where I'm going with this.

On February 28th, US President Donald Trump, in tandem with Israeli President Netanyahu, began an aerial offensive on Iran without consulting the US Congress. The missile strikes were ostensibly carried out to encourage a regime change in Iran, following the January massacre of protesters.

A month later - past the President's initial four-week deadline - the rhetorical dynamics of this war have changed immensely. What was once an attack aimed at forcing regime change within Iran became a "pre-emptive" strike based on non-existent evidence of the "imminent threat" of Iran's nuclear capacity to US national security (just ask Joe Kent, the now resigned US counter-terrorism chief), and which has in recent days become a fight over oil following the closing of the strait of Hormuz and the accompanying crumbling global markets.

The Prime Minister's stance on the war has been tentative. Although Starmer has emphasised the importance of international law and the UK's national interest, pledging "not to be dragged into the Iran war", we are involved, albeit in a "defensive capacity." We have granted the US their request to use UK bases for strikes on Iranian capabilities - despite Starmer's refusal ahead of the initial attacks. On the 31st of March it was also reported that "extra British troops and more UK air defence systems will be deployed to the Middle East for defensive action against Iranian attacks in the region, bringing the total number of UK personnel involved in the defence of the Gulf and Cyprus to around 1,000."

Trump's response to the Prime Minister's hesitant resistance has been characteristically erratic and hyperbolic. He is quoted as saying, "this is not Winston Churchill we're dealing with." (referring to the PM). Trump has gone from pleading for support to receiving it and expressing disappointment in a delay of support to declaring victory in spite of a lack of support, and so on and so forth.

In contrast to the President's open and gleeful mockery of the UK and Starmer's government (ironic, I know), Starmer seems nevertheless desperate to maintain a relationship, however strained, between the UK and the US - perhaps because his position as Labour leader depends significantly on the apparent good will between him and the notoriously emotionally volatile Donald. In a press conference on Tuesday, UK Defence Secretary John Healey told reporters, "We're two nations whose militaries are bound closely together, that work closely together, whose intelligence services share uniquely the recognition of the threats around the world and the action that free nations must take and take together." Starmer also insisted that the "special relationship is in operation" despite the tensions.

The Prime Minister is in an impossible position. By attempting to maintain the "diplomatic glaze" of the US-UK special relationship, he must walk the perilous line of calculated bush-beating, using all the right words to try to avoid a tantrum, whilst being flanked on all sides by the circling opposition who are looking for any angle for attack to gain favour with their bases (ignoring of course the complete U-turn of the Conservatives and Reform in their support of the war, but that's a story for another day). The point stands, I do not envy him.

That being said, it's time the UK government come to terms with the fact that this special relationship may well have run it's course. Maybe we might be able to rekindle something once our partner isn't breaking international law, carrying out military operations with the man responsible for the genocide of over 70,000 Palestinians, and flirting with a World War. Or maybe not.

Either way, I am far from holding hope that the US Government will somehow wake to reason and start considering the effects of it's macho humiliation rituals on the victims of their egoism, but I still have, however misplaced, faith in the rationality of our country and in the power of the ghosts in its closet to drag us back from the cliff edge and leave the consequences of the US' violent recklessness to itself.

Trump is, among other things, a spoiled brat. He surrounds himself with an impenetrable wall of manic followers and ignores anyone who disagrees with him, instead labelling them as cowards and idiots. He expects the world to accommodate his every desire, and if he said the sun revolved around it, for us to agree. To be fair, he's not entirely wrong in his estimation. The West is afraid of upsetting him, of making an enemy out of him; of not giving him what he wants. It's not the brat's fault they're spoilt. They just haven't been told "no" enough.

This is not the US it once was, and this is not our war. This is an empire in collapse, and although upsetting its leader isn't preferable, it's necessary so that we don't end up trapped under the rubble. It's time we took a break.

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/22/uk-confirms-iran-fired-two-missiles-at-british-american-base.html

All mistakes are my own. Fuck AI.