Keir Starmer has been accused of trying to imitate Donald Trump’s output on social media after posting a TikTok video about the crisis in the Middle East overlaid with the prime minister’s voice and the Dire Straits song Money for Nothing.
The video begins with footage showing Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters flying overhead before cutting to British military aircraft in action and a destroyed drone, as Starmer’s voice expresses the position he has taken in the conflict.
“Our number one priority is to protect our people,” says Starmer, accompanied by the sound of electric guitars played by Dire Straits.
Starmer refused to join the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, but has since authorized “defensive” actions.
Al Pinkerton, a Liberal Democrat MP, said the choice of the song when the military was “clamoring” over the government’s defense spending plan seemed “particularly dubious”.
“Trump’s illegal war in the Middle East is not a promotional film despite what (the president’s) media channels may imply,” he added, referring to White House social media posts that celebrated the bombing of Iran with a montage of clips from Hollywood movies and TV shows.
“Downing Street seems unable to avoid being sucked into the orbit of Trump’s deranged confusion between blockbuster success and international conflict.”
The Green Party said the TikTok clip “has echoes of White House videos glorifying war.”
Asked if the prime minister approved of the music used in his social media posts, his spokesman told reporters: “I’m not going to get into internal processes, but you have your words on your commitment to defense spending.”
Starmer told the Munich Security Conference last month that the UK was going to “have to spend more and faster” when it comes to defence, after pledging last year to spend 2.5% of national economic output on central defense by April 2027.
TikTok has increasingly become the prime minister’s preferred social media platform, whose production has previously been praised as “almost competent”.
He used the platform earlier this week to post clips of a phone call with the leaders of France and Germany where they discussed the outbreak of war, with a more generic musical sound in the background.
There was speculation that Dire Straits’ choice could have been the result of an algorithmic tip from TikTok itself.
