BritBeats and Italian Mambo: Starmer, Meloni and the Washington Consensus
Keir Starmer goes to Washington and Giorgia Meloni delivers a message to CPAC's far-right gathering. What is next for their relationships with Washington and their support for Ukraine?
Britbeats and Italian Mambo- Starmer, Meloni, and the Washington consensus
Today it’s the launch of a new section of the newsletter, Italian Mambo, dedicated to all the chaotic dance of Italian affairs. However, as Trump is dominating every news cycle, especially giving his choice to negotiate with Vladimir Putin the future of Ukraine, disregarding both Ukrainians and the EU countries, this time we’ll have a Britbeats and Italian Mambo crossover.
Britbeats: Starmer, Trump, the end of the “special relationship” and Ukraine
When PM Keir Starmer visits Washington on Thursday, February 27, he will have to contend with a very complicated diplomatic gathering, from almost every point of view and with practically every actor in DC.
Starmer’s intentions of maintaining the UK’s support for Ukraine will constitute a major clash with the Trump Administration. Trump’s decision to negotiate directly with Putin has managed to break the international isolation that Russia has faced for the last three years (in the Global North at least, not in the Global South).
All of this has caused the US-Ukrainian relationships to deteriorate to a point where salvaging them seems unlikely. Zelenskyy has been labeled a dictator (as elections should have been held last year) and is now being blackmailed into reaching a deal (an extortionate one) on minerals of which Ukraine is rich; US negotiators have threatened that Ukraine’s access to Starlink could be revoked if an agreement is not reached.
Let’s go in order. First of all, elections cannot be held in Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian constitution during a time of war, martial law has been in place since 2022 and let’s not forget about the Ukrainians who are displaced internally, those who have left the country, the territory occupied by the Russian troops and the risks that civilians would face by heading to the polls (as Russian forces have hit civilians and civilian targets repeatedly since the beginning of their invasion). Of course, both Trump and Musk play into the Russian propaganda by omitting all of this and portraying Zelenskyy as someone who does not want to relinquish power instead. When it comes to rare earths and Starlink two things are further confirmed: Trump’s personification of the disaster capitalism examined by Naomi Klein in her crucial essay The Shock Doctrine and the fact that Starlink is first and foremost a blackmailing tool in the hands of Musk (and any government should be wary of this).
Back to Starmer. Starmer has mentioned the intention of sending boots on the ground in Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping force, in a post-peace deal scenario, initially suggesting that he would have done that if the US led the way. Now, stranger things have happened, but as things stand now it may be more likely that Vecna is the actual hero of the Duffer Brothers’ series.
The US Secretary of Defence, Pete Hegseth spelled it out clearly at the Nato Ukraine summit on February 12 in Brussels “ That said, the United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement.”
“Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops. If these troops are deployed as peacekeepers to Ukraine at any point, they should be deployed as part of a non-NATO mission. And they should not covered under Article 5. There also must be robust international oversight of the line of contact. To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.”
Ukraine is of course central but not the only matter of British-US contention. Trump, like Putin, has contempt and disgust for Europe which includes the UK as well.
Trump sees himself as an Emperor and the European countries as its colonies. This transatlantic dynamic did not start with Trump; unlike his predecessors, however, he has no problems spelling that out.
Vicepresident J D Vance is likely to raise free speech during Starmer's visit (free speech in the Trump sphere equals hate speech and the removal of any firewall around the far-right) while Musk has shown contempt for Starmer himself, spreading disinformation and mentioned scenarios of “civil war” in the UK during the racist violence of August 2024, attacked MP and Undersecretary of State for Safeguarding and Violence against Women and Girls Jess Phillips and has been looking into ways of ousting Starmer before the 2029 elections.
Starmer is unlikely to receive a warm reception in this scenario. What will happen to the special relationship?
The special relationship between Washington and London was forged during the two World Wars and has linguistic, cultural, and generally shared geopolitical interests. However, this relationship especially after World War II turned to be a very unequal dynamic based on the different military and political influences. The relationship also experienced severe issues, when PM Anthony Eden joined forces with France and Israel to seize control of the Suez Canal following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s nationalisation of the crucial waterway in 1956. The UK, France, and Israel's military aggression against Egypt generated a crisis that required a US and Soviet response to be resolved.
Another situation in which the relationship was strained, occurred when PM Harold Wilson refused to follow the US in Vietnam, making him unpopular in Washington.
Starmer keeps the interests of his predecessors in making the UK a bridge with Europe. However, how can a post-Brexit UK be that bridge when the current US Administration or elements close to it express contempt for Europe, the UK, and Starmer personally? We will have to wait for Thursday. In the meantime, Foreign Secretary David Lammy is expected to announce fresh new sanctions against Russia tomorrow, further confirming the UK’s support for Ukraine. And now, let’s move from an aspiring bridge to a bridgehead or a battering ram.
Italian Mambo: PostFascist Mac n' Orwell's 1984 battering ram
Giorgia Meloni delivered a video message at this year’s CPAC in Washington. Meloni is a regular participant in the event and as the Italian PM, her presence carries weight as the Italian Ambassador of MAGA, and European face of MEGA (Salvini is trying to compete with her in this arena, but the balance of power between the two will never allow him to regain that influence). The beginning of her speech was welcomed like the arrival of a rockstar on stage.
That was the same stage where Elon Musk performed with a chainsaw gifted by Milei in what seemed a scene out of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. In addition to that, Steve Bannon doubled down on Musk by performing a Nazifascist salute at the end of his speech. That salute pushed Jordan Bardella, president of National Rally (Rassemblement National) to cancel his participation on Friday. Bannon responded that Bardella “is unworthy to lead France”.
Meloni was undeterred by Bannon’s gesture. This has historical roots and marks the difference between France and Italy. In France, 80 years after the defeat of NaziFascism while the National Rally and far-right are stronger than ever, there is not a debate on whether the Nazi puppet regime of Vichy could be compared to the French Resistance. In Italy, due to willing collective amnesia and historical revisionism, the Resistance and the puppet regime of the Italian Social Republic are presented as equally worthy in certain contexts.
Back to the speech, Meloni used her traditional far-right nationalist rhetoric, attacking the mainstream propaganda machine, the “radical” Left, and those “sabotaging (the West) from within with the virus of cancel culture and woke ideology”. She said that Italy is thriving (without mentioning the decline of industrial production conveniently), acclaimed her government’s fight against “illegal immigration” ( after freeing and flying back to Lybia the torturer Elmasry, who is the subject of an ICC arrest warrant, and at a time when the Albania deportation plans have failed over and over again) and added, “we’re expanding freedom in every aspect of Italians life”.
This last part was very Orwellian of Meloni, at a time when journalists like Fanpage’s editor Francesco Cancellato and activist Luca Casarini were spied on through spyware developed by the Israeli company Paragon, which cancelled its contract with the Italian government when this scandal was exposed. The list does not end here as the security bill of the government aims to limit or halt the right to protest.
Overall, Meloni played the ballad of the leader of a good colony, reassuring the other European colonies that Emperor Trump would be good, even for Ukraine (despite all the evidence to the contrary). Interestingly, Meloni mentioned the Ukrainians’ fight for freedom but not the aggressor. A simple mistake or a realignment?
So, who is going to be the favourite leader from Emperor Trump’s colonies? The weak and ineffective (except on Ukraine) Starmer or the postfascist battering ram PM Giorgia Meloni? We will have to wait and see. That is all for now, the newsletter will be back this week. Stay tuned, and subscribe!