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Trump humiliates Starmer and Blair in bad day for centrist dads

In 2006, George W. Bush infamously embarrassed Tony Blair by yelling “Yo, Blair” at him. It wasn’t the informality which made this incident humiliating; it was the fact it perfectly encapsulated the so-called ‘special relationship’ between the UK and US. This wasn’t a relationship of equals, and it hadn’t been for some time. When America hollered, the UK came running. Donald Trump and Keir Starmer have had ‘Yo Blair’ moments of their own, with the latest being this:


For good measure, Trump also humiliated Tony Blair in a separate incident.

Yo, Starmer

In the video above, Trump asks:

Where’s United Kingdom?

Starmer responds as if he’s in a pantomime, chirping:

I’m behind you.

He was literally right there too. It’s unclear if this is further evidence that Trump has dementia or an instance of Starmer’s forgettableness; either way, Trump sounds incredibly tired as he says “come here”, before asking “everything going good?” Starmer responds “very good”, with Trump telling him “it’s very nice that you’re here”.

While this exchange sounds pleasant enough, Trump proceeds to drop a hydrogen bomb of awkwardness by turning away from Starmer and continuing his train of thought, leaving Starmer just standing there like a lemon.

What does he do next?

He slowly shuffles around and limply walk backs into position while Giorgia Meloni and Mark Carney strain to look neutral.

This is what the scene looks like after he returns to his position – Starmer seemingly crestfallen while his peers looks like they’re trying not to laugh:

Picture as described above

This is how things looked beforehand:

In this picture Starmer and the other PMs are laughing

Of course, you can definitely read too much into these things.

Maybe Meloni and Carney were remembering a funny joke, while Starmer was thinking about how he provided military support to an ongoing genocide and may end up in the Hague.

Regardless of the truth, it’s definitely a ‘Yo, Blair’ moment in that it perfectly encapsulates the special relationship in 2025. The US barely remembers that we’re there even when we’re obviously and painfully right there.

In response to these harrowing scenes, people noted the following:

No Blair

As promised, Trump also managed to embarrass Blair after embarrassing Starmer with the following exchange:


Translation: ‘the war-monger/criminal Tony Blair is absolutely not popular enough in the Middle East, and we need to back away from our plan to make him the viceroy of Palestine‘.

This was at least less embarrassing than what he subjected Starmer to, but only because Blair wasn’t lurking in the background when he said it.

Trump, Starmer, and repetition

The saying goes that ‘history repeats itself, first as tragedy and second as farce’. We were well into the farce stage with Bush and Blair; as such, it makes sense that what we’re seeing now is so far beyond farcical.

Schadenfreude aside, it’s important to remember that the bufoonish actions of these grotesque clowns have real-life consequences. The ceasefire is a welcome end to the genocide, but it’s also just the beginning:


Featured image via Clash Report 

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.