Irish Examiner view: Donald Trump might learn a lesson from Kier Starmer
US president Donald Trump reviews the guard of honour during the ceremonial welcome at Windsor Castle, Berkshire. Picture: Jonathan Brady/PA
It is curious, is it not, that while US president Donald Trump’s revels in his ego-bloating state visit to the UK, he remains as yet untainted by the fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, but British prime minister Kier Starmer’s political career hangs by a thread because of it.
It has been a tough week for the Labour leader and prime minister.
First, he lost his deputy and the housing secretary over a stamp duty scandal.
Then he lost his director of political strategy for misguided remarks about party elder Diane Abbott and, finally, he lost Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US.
Mandelson’s sacking came amid accusations of what Starmer knew about his associations with Epstein and when he knew it.
The pressure has piled on since Labour’s former ‘Prince of Darkness’ got his P45.
Questions about Starmer’s judgement in appointing Mandelson in the first place, especially as everyone — apart from the prime minister, apparently — knew of his close links with a man now known to have been a paedophile sex trafficker.
In America, Mr Trump, long known to have been a close friend of Epstein, has for months now been fighting off a growing clamour to release the so-called ‘Epstein files’ in which US attorney general, Pam Bondi, has revealed he is mentioned at length.
Right and left activists have been pressing for the release of the files for two reasons: Firstly, Trump promised to do so during his election campaign; and, secondly, his failure to do so is indicative he has something to hide.
With characteristic bluster, Trump has so far avoided having to release the files despite the background noise and there is no lacking in irony that the same matter has now engulfed Starmer, despite the fact he had nothing ever to do with Epstein.
This was a man who’s type Trump’s Maga base are convinced runs the world and, unforgiving lot that they are, will take some convincing to the contrary.
That the president has somehow maintained his aura of invincibility thus far is something of a miracle.
His time in the UK and his surveillance of the wreckage of the Starmer administration in the wake of the Epstein revelations, may just give him some thought about his own apparent inviolability.
When US vice president JD Vance this week encouraged fellow citizens to engage in a mass “doxing” effort to track down, intimidate, and harass people who were perceived not to have sufficiently mourned the assassinated right-wing guru Charlie Kirk, it smacked of McCarthy-era America.
Post-Second World War, the country was convulsed by a mass paranoia about communism.
President Harry Truman issued an executive order in March 1947, which required all federal workers to be screened for loyalty.
The determining factor for disloyalty would be a finding of “membership in, affiliation with, or sympathetic association” with any organisation determined to be “totalitarian, fascist, communist, or subversive”.
It sparked a broad investigatio
n by the House Un-American Activities Committee, led by senator Joe McCarthy, which claimed to have a list of members of the Communist Party USA working in the US state department.
The committee broadened its remit beyond civil servants to targets including prominent figures in the entertainment industry, academics, left-wing politicians, and union activists.
“McCarthyism” saw people prosecuted despite questionable and inconclusive evidence.
Many lost their livelihoods and had their careers destroyed. Some were imprisoned and lives were ruined. It was a dark period for US democracy.
In the early 21st century, the term McCarthyism has taken on a broader meaning — illustrating similar efforts to crack down on alleged subversive elements.
Nowadays, it describes reckless and unsubstantiated accusations of treason and far-left extremism.
It also covers demagogic personal attacks on the character and patriotism of political opponents. Sound familiar?
It reflects a major escalation by the current administration to stifle political opposition.
It is using Kirk’s killing to make baseless accusations to the effect that democratic organisations and protesters are part of a violent conspiracy to undermine conservative values and the US way of life.
All nonsense, of course, but allies of the president are now threatening to revoke visas of people “celebrating” Kirk’s death; begin federal investigations into hate speech; and, designate certain groups as domestic terrorists.
Shades of a dark past are alive and well in today’s America.
Undoubtedly suave and unquestionably handsome, Robert Redford brought much more to life other than those shallow Hollywood prerequisites.
The death of the actor this week closed off a career that incorporated many more threads than simple star quality.
Although the recipient of only one Academy award (for directing), Redford’s was a richly diverse career and although he initially appeared to be a throwback to a different era — one in which the likes of Douglas Fairbanks and Tyrone Power were matinee idols — the canon of work he was involved in as an actor, director, and producer was much more nuanced.
He made his breakthrough in George Roy Hill’s in 1969 that he made his breakthrough.
Alongside Paul Newman — who he would star alongside again a few years later in — Redford played a devil-may-care outlaw and he wowed audiences and critics alike.
A stellar career in the movie business followed, but it was his role as the gatekeeper and guardian of the commercial/indie US cinema genre, though the Sundance Institute and its annual Sundance Film Festival in Utah, that marked him out as being so much more than a mere film star.
His is a rich legacy which others, rightly, will strive to emulate.
Truly he was so much more than a simple Hollywood idol.
He was not just simply a pretty face.
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