Simon Pearson

Starmer’s Bargain: Surrendering Sovereignty to Silicon Valley

April 2, 2025

In trading tax cuts for Trump’s tariff relief, Starmer hasn’t negotiated, he’s capitulated, handing the keys of British economic policy to Big Tech and calling it diplomacy.

Starmer’s offer to slash taxes for US tech giants in exchange for Trump lifting tariffs isn’t negotiation—it’s surrender. Faced with an aggressive America First agenda, Downing Street’s response is to open the door wider, let capital raid the pantry, and thank it on the way out. This isn’t diplomacy. It’s capitulation dressed as pragmatism.

The Digital Services Tax was never radical. It barely skimmed the surface of what companies like Google, Amazon and Meta extract from British society—our data, our time, our markets. Now even that token gesture is up for sale, not to protect workers or rebuild infrastructure, but to appease a foreign president who governs like a mafia boss.

The logic is pure Thatcherite inversion: don’t tax wealth, court it. Don’t defend sovereignty, auction it. In a world where Trump’s tariffs are wielded as weapons, Starmer doesn’t resist—he begs to be spared. And the price? The UK becomes even more of a satellite economy, a branch office for Big Tech in the hope of avoiding Bigly Tariffs.

Meanwhile, austerity returns at home. Workers face real-terms pay cuts, disability benefits are slashed, and the unions are told to behave. But the multinationals? They get handouts. This isn’t economic strategy—it’s class war. A war Starmer’s government seems determined to fight on behalf of capital, not against it.

This is what surrender looks like in the age of empire rebooted. Not with flags and parades, but with tax breaks and trade-offs. Washington names the price, and Westminster pays it.

diary, Keir Starmer, tarrifs

Starmer’s Bargain: Surrendering Sovereignty to Silicon Valley

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