JACK STRAW: 'Keir Starmer has yet another challenge on his hands from Trump'

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I became Foreign Secretary a few months before ‘9/11’ -11 th September 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorism led the US to suffer its worst loss of life on its mainland since their Civil War in the 1860s.

The attack traumatised the American people’s sense of themselves. It made its President, George W Bush, determined to stop such an outrage ever happening again. We had our challenges in handling the Bush administration. But Tony Blair was successful in persuading President Bush that the US should use the United Nations to build international support. We got that, on both Afghanistan and Iraq.

We sometimes thought that we had our difficulties in handling the Bush administration, but they were as nothing compared with the intense challenge of dealing with the Donald. Whenever I have folk expressing ‘disappointment’ about this Labour government (frequently) I remind my questioners that Keir Starmer has done well on the Trump front. I say he’s done brilliantly. No one in British politics, not Badenoch, not Davey, not Farage, could have done better.

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Now our Prime Minister has yet another challenge on his hands, from President Trump. It’s so far received surprisingly little media attention, but it’s really serious. This is his decision, announced earlier this week, to withdraw the United States from no less than 66 international agencies, which they say, are operating ‘contrary to US national interests’.

These include the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Women (which advocates for women’s empowerment), the UN Population Fund (promoting family planning and child health), and the UN Democracy Fund, which supports initiatives to improve democracy across the world.

All these agencies, in Mr Trump’s view, are part of a ‘woke agenda’. His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, says these agencies are ‘redundant, wasteful, advancing agendas contrary’ to the US’s . What’s in Mr Trump’s sights is the United Nations as a whole . He’s repeatedly questioned what the UN is there for. Such ‘isolationist’ thinking is nothing new in the US.

After the First World War, then US President Woodrow Wilson launched the ‘League of Nations’, to make that war the last. But the US Senate then blocked the US from ever being involved. That was one of many dismal decisions taken in the inter-war period which allowed Adolf Hitler to believe that he could get away with his megalomania.

It was the US which led the formation of the UN, after the devastation of the Second World War. It’s cumbersome, frustrating but it has helped prevent many conflicts, as President Bush recognised. Be careful what you wish for, Mr Trump.

Shortly after 9/11 Tony Blair sent me to Iran, to seek their cooperation, and intelligence, about their old enemy, the Taliban in Afghanistan who were harbouring Al Qaeda.

My trip was the first by a British Foreign Secretary since Iran’s Islamic Revolution in early 1979, when the Shah was swept aside, and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took power.

I was entranced by the country, and its people – though not its theocratic government, and their maddening ways. I’ve been back seven times since, and take a continuing interest in the place.

The regime is now facing its worst civil unrest since that which led to the Shah’s downfall.

Its response has been predictable, and brutal. I simply don’t know what will happen – no one does. But you can smell the regime’s decay – so who knows?

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I’m a squirrel. I have boxes of records from my years in politics. This archive is going to a university library. I’m sorting it now.

In one box I found a letter from a senior judge – of ‘condolences’ (ha, ha) for my team, Blackburn Rovers, relegated to the Championship.

Now our worry is that our destiny will be Division One. Please God give us back the glory days, when we won the Premiership!

According to the latest research, dogs can learn new words just by ‘overhearing their owners talking with each other.’