LONDON — Donald Trump arrives in Britain Tuesday for a full-blown pomp fest. But beyond the walls of Windsor Castle, the public is far from jubilant.

While the famous British stiff upper lip may prevail, and Prime Minister Keir Starmer will do his best to keep calm and carry on — all is not well in Westminster.

The center-left prime minister’s promise to end the political chaos after 14 years of Conservative rule has lost its luster following unpopular economic decisions and the successive departures of key allies since early September. He is increasingly viewed as a political loser with one of the lowest domestic approval ratings among Western leaders.

In short, he no longer looks like the winner who in February bonded with Trump over their respective 2024 landslide election victories. “It’s no secret we’re from different political traditions, but there’s a lot that we have in common,” the PM said at their first White House meeting. “We believe it’s not taking part that counts. What counts is winning.” 

Now it is Reform UK, led by Trump’s old ally Nigel Farage, that is ”winning” in the polls on the back of a MAGA-inspired promise to Make Britain Great Again — while MPs and ministers in Starmer’s own party privately question their leader’s political judgment. 

Meanwhile, ministers are rattled after a London rally organized on Saturday by Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson — a far-right activist from whom even Farage has distanced himself — attracted the support of up to 150,000 people (a police estimate that has been disputed by the organizers).

It was billed as a rally for free speech — an issue that fires up U.S. conservatives, who have recently pointed to the U.K. when sounding warnings about the direction America has taken — but Starmer’s problems are deeper and more complex than an American caricature of Britain might suggest. 

Far more than 150,000 Britons are disillusioned. Some are riled by years of economic stagnation, while others deplore successive governments’ handling of undocumented migrants arriving on British shores. Some are fired up by both.

For Downing Street, which sees Starmer’s handling of the unpredictable Trump as a rare success story for his administration, there is a danger that the domestic noise will overshadow the deal-making opportunities on offer from rolling out the red carpet for a full state visit this week. Trump may also see jeopardy in associating too closely with a weakened prime minister.

Immigration nation 

Starmer is not deaf to the frustrations.  

A key ally, Peter Kyle, acknowledged the “sense of disquiet and grievance” in British society in Sunday interviews, acknowledging that “immigration is a big concern.”  

The U.K. has long been a destination for those arriving outside legal channels, but an uptick in asylum seekers arriving on small boats across the Channel from France has fueled the ongoing political debate.  

The use of hotels to house small boat arrivals while their asylum applications are being processed sparked local protests earlier this year.  

The tally of arrivals since Starmer took office passed 50,000 over the summer — but the figure remains a small fraction of Britain’s overall net migration tally, which fell to 431,000 in 2024 after surpassing 850,000 in 2022 and 2023 under the previous Conservative government.  

Not following the leader 

But Starmer has more problems of his own making than small boat arrivals, and there have even been dark mutterings about his future within his own political party. 

Unlike Trump, Starmer does not have a presidential mandate and can be toppled by his own MPs.

Starmer lost a senior aide on Monday after a lurid conversation about veteran left-wing MP Diane Abbott was leaked — the third scandal in as many weeks to engulf the prime minister. Peter Mandelson was sacked as ambassador to the U.S. last Thursday, while his Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner quit over unpaid taxes the previous week.

One disillusioned Labour MP, who like others in this piece was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said: “It’s all going to be over in May, the whole project.” 

Elections to the Scottish and Welsh parliaments are scheduled for May 2026, and are viewed as a key test of Labour’s popularity.

Another concurred that was a “common view,” adding: “It could all calm down, but he’s not doing very well and with so many [MPs] with wafer-thin majorities, if they see these May results as confirmation that it’s going to be very difficult, it’s going to be quite pressured.” 

“They’ve made some terrible mistakes in the first year,” said the leader of an outwardly Starmer-friendly trade union. “It’s not that they’ve got everything wrong, they’ve done some good stuff,” the person mused, before adding: “I do need someone to do me a note of what that stuff is.”

Starmer has brought in multiple officials who worked under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to try to turn things around. But one person who speaks regularly to No. 10 argued that unlike Blair, the current prime minister doesn’t have a “Starmerite” ideological caucus, and that MPs’ loyalty to him was forged during his 2024 election victory. 

Economic stagnation 

On the left of British politics, where Starmer also has his detractors, the public discontent has been given a different diagnosis.  

Labour MP Clive Lewis, a key figure in a new group called Mainstream, which has been set up to fight a political drift to the right, said: “People want respect in their lives. They want to be able to know that their children will have a warm, safe home, that they will be able to have a decent education over which they have a say.” 

Lewis blames the “form of capitalism that we have adopted in this country” for the disillusionment, and warns change is needed. 

“That means that many of the vested interests, the corporations, the banks, the financial institutions, the billionaires, the multimillionaires, they’re gonna have to take a hit in terms of the power and influence that they have. This doesn’t work without that.” 

Luke Tryl, executive director of the More in Common think tank, which regularly tracks public sentiment, said: “There is no doubt that many Britons are deeply disillusioned with the state of the country today, and few people are happy with the trajectory the U.K. is on. 

“The simple truth is life feels too hard, and politicians seem unresponsive to the public mood or even not in control at all.” 

Rhetoric vs. reality 

At Saturday’s London rally, tech billionaire and X owner Elon Musk beamed in via video link, declaring that “violence is coming” and claiming “you either fight back or you die.” 

Downing Street pushed back hard. “The U.K. is a fair, tolerant and decent country. The last thing the British people want is this sort of dangerous and inflammatory language,” the prime minister’s spokesman told reporters.  

Anna McShane, director of the New Britain Project, which has been tracking the depth of the malaise among the British public, said most people “just feel resignation” rather than anger.  

Few Brits are looking for a Trumpian solution, says Tryl of More in Common.  

“In fact quite the opposite, the instability surrounding the second Trump presidency on the international stage is fueling feelings of anxiety.” 

“Instead most of the people we speak to are looking for something simpler — both the change Keir Starmer promised but also the ‘politics that treads more lightly’ he said would go alongside it.”