No 10 won’t say if PM still ‘likes and respects’ Trump after latest insults
Sir Keir Starmer has fired back at Donald Trump’s latest insults in a very Keir Starmer way – indirectly, and through a spokesman.
In an interview with Sky News last night, the US president bashed the so-called ‘special relationship’ between his country and the UK amid tensions over the war in Iran.
Trump said the relationship has ‘been better’, and even suggested the US-UK trade deal secured last spring ‘can always be changed’.
He told the outlet: ‘How is the relationship? It’s the relationship where: when we asked them for help, they were not there.
‘When we needed them, they were not there. When we didn’t need them, they were not there. And they still aren’t there.’
At Prime Minister’s Questions today, Starmer said there had been ‘a lot of pressure’ had been applied on him to change course on Iran, and ‘that pressure included what happened last night’.
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He told Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey: ‘I’m not going to change my mind, I’m not going to yield. It is not in our national interest to join the war, and we will not do so.’
But the real twist of the knife came after the session in the House of Commons came to an end.
At a briefing for journalists, the PM’s spokesman was asked if Starmer still ‘likes and respects’ President Trump, as he said he did last year.
Instead of confirming, the spokesman simply pointed back to Starmer’s response to the president’s comments during PMQs.
That may be particularly tough for Trump to hear, as he said in his interview last night: ‘I think I like Starmer.’
Trump also appeared to not know what ‘the special relationship’ referred to when first asked about it, and resumed his regular criticism of the British government’s policies on energy and immigration.
In the president’s first year of his second term, the apparent friendship between him and Starmer took many by surprise.
But it appears to have gone south in the weeks since the US, alongside Israel, launched its war on Iran at the end of February, with the UK now a regular target for attacks on Trump’s Truth Social feed.
The No 10 spokesman said he ‘certainly wouldn’t characterise [the relationship between the two leaders] in the way that the president has’.
He added: The special relationship with the US exists on multiple levels, and we have a close relationship which spans trade, diplomacy, national security, culture and beyond.
‘It’s far bigger than any individual issue.’
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