RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: What irony that Starmer’s in the box seat for a U.S. trade deal thanks to Brexit – which he bitterly opposed and spent years trying to stop

Donald Trump dealt Keir Starmer a gold-plated Get Out Of Jail Free card when he dropped his global tariff bomb.

Yes, the UK will have to pay 10 per cent on all exports to the US and is not exempt from the worldwide 25 per cent levy on automobiles.

But if Surkeir plays his cards right, those penalties could melt away within months, if not weeks.

Short-term pain, for the American consumer as well as British exporters, could rapidly morph into long-term gain.

A free trade deal with the US, the world’s biggest market, could be tantalisingly close. Ten per cent is the bargain basement number, the lowest allowed under the new tariff regime.

It’s a come-on to Britain to get on board the Trump train by negotiating a zero-tariffs transatlantic trade pact.

If Starmer can pull that off, it would transform Labour’s economic and electoral fortunes, currently and deservedly at the bottom of a skip as a result of bungling Rachel From Complaints’ serial incompetence.

Fortunately, Surkeir appears to understand that and is keeping his powder dry, shunning knee-jerk retaliation – unlike the deluded protectionist EU. Whether he will follow through remains to be seen.

Sir Keir Starmer is seeking a trade deal with America to negate the tariffs’ impact on the economy, setting a deadline of May 1 for an agreement to be reached

The US President described April 2 as ‘liberation day’ for his country, as his administration attempts to ‘make America wealthy again’

The great irony in all of this is that Starmer is in the box seat because of Brexit, which he bitterly opposed and spent years single-mindedly trying to overturn. Can he swallow his long-held Euro-federalist principles and Put Britain First for once?

For the first time since we voted convincingly to leave the EU, a transatlantic free trade deal is within realistic reach. As I wrote here on Tuesday, scrapping import duties on American cars and trucks would be a cost-free concession, since hardly anyone buys one anyway. But it would immediately lead to the 25 per cent tariff on British automobile exports to the US being lifted, which would principally benefit Jaguar Land Rover exports.

If Starmer did that, he would be able to hold a triumphant press conference alongside a grateful British car worker, just as Trump did at the White House on Wednesday, when a member of the United Auto Workers union from Detroit was wheeled out to hose him down with treacle.

As it stands, Starmer’s government is alienating car workers, who should be Labour’s natural supporters, by putting them out of work as a result of Ed Miliband’s lunatic Net Zero EV targets. Scrapping those might have avoided the closure of Vauxhall’s commercial vehicles factory at Luton.

What’s wrong with encouraging overseas manufacturers to build vehicles on your home turf? That’s what the Thatcher government, with the assistance of sensible trade union leaders like the engineers’ Terry Duffy and the electricians’ Eric Hammond, did in the 1980s. And it’s why Japanese-owned Nissan in Sunderland is now the biggest car factory in Britain, supporting thousands of jobs in the North East.

So, too, would imposing Trump-style tariffs prevent the Chinese Communist Party flooding the British market with heavily subsidised imported electric cars, potentially wiping out what’s left of our own automobile industry, including Nissan.

A free trade agreement with Washington might also rescue what remains of our steel industry, currently staring down the barrel of extinction because of cheap, dumped foreign imports and, now, punitive American tariffs.

We should also drop our hysterical opposition to the import of American agricultural products, on the basis that we would soon be wiped out by poisonous chickens washed in chlorine.

This is the most absurd scare story yet. We already rinse supermarket salads in chlorine solutions. And the Americans eat eight billion chickens a year, and last time anyone looked they weren’t all dying in the streets after wolfing down a bucket of KFC. Surely US chicken can’t be any worse than some of the muck churned out by the rash of Albanian fried chicken shops which pollute our high streets everywhere.

Trump is dishing out tax breaks to farmers and putting tariffs on imported foods often harvested by foreign workers on slave wages. In Britain, Labour is hammering farmers over inheritance tax. Go figure, as they say on the other side of the pond.

You don’t have to approve of Trump to appreciate what he’s trying to do. And that’s to protect and create American jobs and make his nation wealthier. Only time will tell if he’s successful, but the early indications are that his America First policy is already paying dividends, with investment pouring into the US.

The markets are wobbly, but they’ll recover. Leaders of foreign countries who do business in America are discombobulated, but all the indications are that they’ll get with the programme.

Certainly, Trump is a disruptor. The stand-up comedian John Mulaney has compared him to a horse loose in a hospital, one of the funniest sketches I’ve seen. Check it out on YouTube.

The President uses tariffs as a political weapon, not just an economic tool. By threatening to impose huge import duties, he has persuaded countries like Venezuela and El Salvador to take back legions of violent gangsters who have entered the US illegally over the past few years.

Just imagine how that kind of policy would be cheered to the rafters in Britain. What if we told France that they would face 50 per cent tariffs on everything from Beaujolais wine to Bleu d’Auvergne cheese unless they stopped sending tens of thousands of illegal immigrants our way? The cross-Channel invasion would halt tomorrow.

And yet we have bunged the French more than £500 million to pay gendarmes puffing on Gitanes to stand back and watch migrants clamber on board dinghies headed for Kent. Missing you already, mon cher.

Ever wondered why the European Left who are so enthusiastic about open borders and free movement of people from all over the world are so viscerally opposed to free trade, especially with America?

If Trump’s tariffs have delivered a shock to the system, they have also been a masterclass in The Art Of The Deal. OK, so he puts America First. That was his promise and that’s his job.

Our politicians spend most of their time knee-deep in appeasement, from the Chagos Islands to Brexit.

Mother Teresa was prepared to give the EU everything they asked for. Boris basically gave up Northern Ireland. All the signs are that Starmer is ready to crawl back to Brussels on his hands and knees. The EU can smell his weakness.

In what sane world would a pledge to defend Ukraine come with a caveat that it won’t happen unless we surrender our fishing waters to the French? You couldn’t make it up.

But that was then. Two long days ago. Now Trump has shaken the kaleidoscope and it’s make your mind up time, as Double Your Money and Opportunity Knocks host Hughie Green used to say.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the most Anglophile President in our lifetime, Surkeir Starmer has a golden opportunity to double his money by smelling the coffee and going flat out for a ‘yuge’ free trade deal with the US.

He doesn’t deserve it, and the Remainiac Left will hate it, but it could be the making of his premiership. Has he the bottle to seize this chance with both hands?

Probably not, but we can only live in hope. And, to quote Hughie Green again, I mean that most sincerely, friends.