Is the Trump-Starmer bromance over?

Is the Trump-Starmer bromance over?Just nowShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleJoe PikePolitics correspondentReutersIt was always an unlikely political bromance: the camera-loving, right-wing businessman hitting it off with a restrained, left-wing London lawyer.Cupid's arrow struck during a two-hour dinner at Trump Tower in September 2024. Five months later in the Oval Office, Starmer whipped out an invitation from the King. The president almost purred.The strength of that initial Trump-Starmer relationship was both a surprise, and a rare example of a clear success for the PM amid a domestically difficult first year in office.Starmer's team regularly declared that their carefully-planned charm offensive had worked. And their proof was the UK's superior trading relationship with Washington.Yet the disintegration of that same friendship in recent weeks also has benefits. And the prime minister is getting steadily more comfortable at taking advantage.The disintegrationThe old Downing Street tactic whenever jaws dropped at a headline-grabbing declaration from the White House was to say: "We're not getting involved" or "what's there to gain?".The UK government carefully voiced policy differences with the US on trade wars, recognition of Palestine or the future of Greenland. But in those interventions, they normally played the policy, not the president.Everything changed when Trump and Starmer disagreed over the use of UK military bases in the Iran War.Ever since we have witnessed a flurry of invective from the president: declaring Starmer was "no Winston Churchill", retweeting a mocking TV sketch about him and even impersonating the PM's voice at a news conference.If that's what Donald Trump is doing in public, we can only wonder about the tone of their regular phone calls in private.Downing Street's anodyne summaries ("readouts" in the government slang) give nothing away and Whitehall officia...