High in his gilded tower, the king of bling sits and sings of many terrible and tangential things.

Fixed like a monument upon his hollow throne, he leers down upon the wretched world, preparing plans to punish its treacheries. 

He liberally sprinkles choice phrases from his basket of petty threats, as relentless streams of cheeseburger smoothies pour through his engorged form.

Flecks of caffeinated spume sputter from his lips as he makes out, dimly in the distance, way across the great grey ocean, unwelcome alliances beginning to take shape.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go, he mutters to his minions. This isn't it at all.

For, out across those nations he's seeking to subjugate to his eternal dominion, whispers of resistance can be heard.

The would-be vassal states to the north and south of his fiefdom have already played their little games, placating the beast with the mildest hints of obedience. He has scented victory, and that, for the moment, has been enough for him.

Their apparent success – at least the fragile truce they've forged – has emboldened one timid cringing creature here in this land of dragons and castles and democrats in distress… and the heart of that knight – none other than the once glorious Sir Keir – has grown a fraction less forlorn.

Yes, at the start of this month, Prime Minister Starmer (for it indeed is he) declared, perhaps a shade too optimistically, that his United Kingdom wouldn't have to choose between its allegiance to Donald Trump's new American empire and its loyalty to our traditional allies in mainland Europe.

Mr. Starmer was speaking to the press in Brussels, where he was attending a meeting of the leaders of the European Union's 27 member states. He was the first British premier to attend such a meeting since our country cut its ties with the union five years ago last month.

European officials have made it clear that they would like to bring Great Britain back into a much closer trading relationship with their massive economic bloc. 

Keir Starmer for his part has accepted these overtures openly and in good faith and has expressed a keen desire to establish more intimate arrangements with our continental friends – just so long as those arrangements don't too obviously cross certain imaginary, blurred, and shifting "red lines" established by the process and principles of Brexit.

But the British economy is on the rocks and has been experiencing a slow steady decline (and moments of utter freefall) throughout the course of this decade. Many people, not without reason, blame the trauma of an ill-considered departure from the European Union for the country's ongoing economic woes.

In fact, a poll conducted last month showed that only 30 percent of British people still think that Brexit was a good idea. Most of the remaining 70 percent – including the 22 percent who voted to leave in 2016 – would doubtlessly claim that they've always believed it would have been better to stay.

Their vote nine years ago had, in a large part, been a protest vote – a vote against the status quo. They certainly hadn't meant to wreck their country's economy. 

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After all, they're not idiots. They're not crazy. They're not Liz Truss.

Yet, despite all this, Keir Starmer still isn't willing to take the risk of antagonising those traditional Labour voters – the working-class constituents of disadvantaged northern cities – who, after decades of neglect, deserted the centre-left party and flocked to Boris Johnson's empty promises of a swift, easy and painless Brexit, thus ensuring the Tories' landslide win in the snap general election of December 2019. 

On the domestic front, brave Sir Keir's natural political instincts veer toward cowardice. But he's also pressingly aware of the presence of the grand orange ogre over on the other side of the Atlantic.

Donald Trump has been explicit about his intention to extend his trade war to Europe. He has left his plans for Britain more ambiguously ominous. 

The Donald's dislike of the EU's trade imbalance with the United States is well known.

"They don't take our cars, they don't take our farm products, they take almost nothing and we take everything from them," he told journalists earlier this month. "Millions of cars, tremendous amounts of food and farm products…"

The UK has a more balanced trading relationship with the USA – but Trump is most anxious that Britain doesn't ally itself with the European Union – and against him. 

The wicked lord sorcerer hardly wants the dwarves and the other mortals of Middle Earth to unite and find they were a good deal stronger than they'd thought.

Following a charm offensive aimed directly at his new best friend Keir Starmer – less charming than offensive, to be sure – Mr. Trump has announced that, although "the UK is out of line," he believes "that one can be worked out."

But he may be underestimating the stubbornness of this bulldog nation. It remains to be seen whether – even if our Prime Minister rolls onto his back to have his belly scratched by the bullying President – the British people themselves will quite be so willing to play ball.

This month, the UK joined France, Germany, and dozens of other nations in expressing its ongoing support for the International Criminal Court after President Trump announced he had ordered sanctions against it. 

But this looks like it was just the start of our slide into anarchy, as Mr. Trump’s attempts to ignore the rule of law continue to reach new depths of ignominy. 

It was also reported this month that the man who appears to see the struggle in the Middle East as an excuse for a massive land-grabbing real estate deal may also threaten to impose trade tariffs on Britain if our government doesn’t agree to give major tax breaks to his new backers in the American tech industries.

This is, of course, the act of a brazen kleptocrat, a shameless piece of daylight robbery from the orange mobster in the White House.

Yet we might hope that this utter lawlessness might eventually prove enough to provoke in our passionless premier – a former Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales – the moral outrage, the moral leadership, and a recognition of the essential power of moral unity which we – and all of Europe – now more than ever most sorely need.

Indeed, we might even dare to hope that the threat of this unprecedentedly aggressive and capricious America might bring the United Kingdom closer to our friends in Europe again and push our disunited continent – increasingly driven by the rise of the Far Right – back toward a belief in the value of a progressive and democratic union, a new Europe – because the alternative is too terrible to imagine or allow.