Donald Trump was careful to note the political differences between him and Sir Keir Starmer as he delivered his initial pronouncement on the PM.
‘He’s liberal, which is a bit different from me,’ said the President, with uncharacteristic understatement.
He went on to cautiously commend Sir Keir for doing ‘a very good job thus far’.
The PM would be wise to remember the mercurial Mr Trump’s verdict on Theresa May when she was in Downing Street.
The relationship between the two leaders was initially warm. However, within 18 months the President blasted her ‘very unfortunate’ handling of Brexit negotiations and observed that Boris Johnson, who had just resigned from her Cabinet, ‘would make a great Prime Minister’.
Sir Keir has escaped, for now, the type of uncomfortable tongue-lashing delivered to the prime minister of Denmark by Mr Trump over his Greenland aspirations.
But real dangers to the ‘special relationship’ exist, for example, in Labour’s ridiculous proposals to hand control of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, an ally of China.
Senior Republicans have now warned the same deal could also benefit Iran.
Sir Keir must ditch that plan, and his Government’s obsession with the European Union. Only then will he be able to capitalise on Mr Trump’s arrival in the White House as an enormous opportunity for Britain.
Council tax trauma
More than four million council tax payers are likely to suffer a very nasty shock when their bills plop on to the mat in a few weeks.
As we reveal today, a broad range of councils are looking at exploiting a loophole in the law which allows them to increase the tax by huge sums.
It will bring still deeper economic despair to many more households.
Labour has already stripped the cold weather payment from millions of pensioners, and taxed parents who choose private education for their children.
Workers will begin to feel the impact of an ill-judged increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions from April.
As shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith writes in the Mail, steps should be taken now to mitigate an economic implosion, including scrapping the highly damaging workplace reforms dictated by Labour’s trade union barons.
Despite Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s claims that growth is the Government’s ‘number one priority’, her policies simply fail to match up with that goal.
She must act quickly to ensure they do.
Copyright and wrong
High-quality publishing and other creative work are time-consuming and often costly endeavours, so it is right that they should be fully protected by copyright law.
In her amendments to proposed legislation going through Parliament, crossbench peer Baroness Kidron is seeking to ensure ‘big tech’ firms pay proper heed to UK law in this area.
As artificial intelligence develops, copyrighted work should be treated fairly.
To do otherwise reduces the likelihood of art, music, film and publishing being able to flourish in the future.
Baroness Kidron’s amendments offer sensible protections and are welcomed by a broad coalition of creative industries and publishers, including this newspaper.
The baroness’s amendments should be whole-heartedly supported by the House of Lords when it considers them this week.
This post was originally published on here
