US TARIFFS on Britain, punishing us for symbolic defiance of Donald Trump’s designs on Greenland, expose how pointless is the so-called “special relationship,” and how empty claims that Nato is an alliance for mutual defence.

Keir Starmer’s abject fawning on the crook in the White House has bought Britain precisely nothing. State visits laced with royal pomp, trade deals loading extra costs on the NHS to boost US pharmaceutical company profits, active collaboration with US piracy, seizing other countries’ ships in international waters — none of it earns us a reprieve from the president’s spite once a trembling voice is raised against his wishes.

European Nato states’ posturing over Greenland is hypocritical — their lofty statements on the inviolability of borders and international law ring hollow after their cowardly evasions on the outrageous abduction of the president of Venezuela.

Even so it is heartfelt, though the idea European armies might actually resist a US takeover is fanciful. Trump’s brazen bid to seize territory from a fellow Nato member risks exposing its true character as a vehicle for US control of other countries’ militaries, dispelling illusions that it exists to protect us from external threats.

That in turn calls into question the entire European war drive — itself dictated by Trump with his demands for huge increases in military spending — and the lies these Washington patsies have told their own publics about Western armed forces acting in defence of democracy or human rights.

And that’s what we need to question. Opposition to Trump is too often framed in liberal terms, laments that he undermines a supposed “rules-based order” and upsets the pious falsehoods of the “free world.”

But for the socialist left this mask-off US imperialism offers opportunities to develop a deeper, popular resistance to authoritarianism, climate catastrophe and war.

It’s combined with an increasingly fascistic wave of terror within the United States, with ICE agents snatching black people at bus stops and committing even murder with presidentially sanctioned impunity: the echoes of Hitler’s Brownshirts are chilling.

That terror is openly celebrated by Britain’s far right, with “Tommy Robinson” tweeting after the unprovoked killing of mother-of-three Renee Good that “we need ICE in Europe.” Trump’s United States could be our future if Reform UK is handed the keys to Downing Street. That’s a message that needs amplifying in every corner of the land. A big majority of British people do not want this.

The far right can be exposed too when it comes to their fake “patriotism” — Robinson has called for the US to attack Britain and abduct our prime minister. Much as Starmer might not be missed, pleading with a foreign power to overthrow our government is not the best look for self-styled nationalists.

The US’s violent authoritarianism is a model for our government’s ever worsening repression of Palestine activism and erosion of civil rights, and the Trump parallels are a basis for building mass opposition to those. Its casual humiliation of its allies provides a context in which campaigns to withdraw from Nato and adopt an independent foreign policy can reach a huge audience.

And the US is not only setting the world on fire through war, it is committed to burning it up. The Trump administration has explicitly rejected any transition to green energy; its resource-grabbing menaces against Venezuela are connected to an outspoken intention to control fossil fuel supplies to power an AI revolution which, unlike that of its chief rival China, is driven by fascist plutocrats and won’t involve renewables.

On multiple fronts — the climate, war, anti-fascism, resisting the creation of a police state — we can build alliances on the basis of rejecting Trump.

Doing so will dictate the context in which leadership battles erupt in the Labour Party, that the Greens engage with questions of war and peace, that Your Party shapes its challenge to the status quo.