38 minutes agoShareSaveHenry Zeffman,Chief political correspondentandJoe Pike,Politics investigations correspondentShareSaveEPAFor a prime minister who has spent a year focusing on building a warm rapport with the US president, using the authority of the despatch box at Prime Minister’s Questions to declare that he “will not yield” was a big moment.It was a tonal shift even from Monday’s speech in Downing Street.No wonder, given the tirade unleashed by President Trump in Sir Keir Starmer’s direction on his Truth Social platform in the early hours of Tuesday morning.Behind the scenes, Sir Keir had been coming under greater pressure to change his approach to the president.”It is a strategy that has failed on every conceivable level,” one Labour MP said in the hours before PMQs, warning that their constituents were increasingly frustrated by the prime minister’s attempts to build a rapport with Trump.”It gets harder and harder to hold your head up high when you’re campaigning,” the MP said.One minister said they were concerned that history may not judge Sir Keir’s approach kindly.”This is not just about how it looks now,” they said. “In five years time will we look back at this approach and see it as appeasement? See it as a massive error?”The Carney playbookSeveral Labour figures say privately they believe that the prime minister ought to follow the example of Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, who warned in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that the “old order is not coming back”.He said: “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”Carney’s problems with the US are more acute than the UK’s.In the moments before his post on Truth Social accusing Sir Keir of “stupidity”, Trump posted a map of the US which incorporated not only the US but Canada too, as well as Greenland and Venezuela.Trump appearing to revive his threats towards Canada could pose particular problems for Sir Keir, too. At the heart of Sir Keir’s strategy for handling Trump – a strategy which was seen until this week as one of the clearest triumphs of his time as prime minister – was the use of the Royal Family.On his first visit to the Oval Office to meet Trump last year, Sir Keir whipped from his pocket a letter from the King extending an invitation to Trump for an unprecedented second state visit to the UK.That has now happened but it does not seem to have secured permanent warm relations with Trump.And the King is the King of Canada as well. What does the deterioration in US-Canadian relations mean for the expected visit of the King to the US this year to mark 250 years of its independence?Even as his position toughened rhetorically today, those around Sir Keir remain resistant to pressure for him to deliver the full-throated ‘Love Actually moment’ some in Labour desire. “You can have these fantasies about sticking it to world leaders,” one confidant of the PM said, “but you still have to speak to them the next day. What do you say then?”It seems likely that Sir Keir’s rhetoric in PMQs will sate some Labour MPs for now. But there was a warning from Steve Witherden, a backbencher from the left of the Labour Party, that there will be ongoing pressure for him to go further: Witherden urged retaliatory tariffs on the “thug in the White House” – an approach the prime minister is desperate to avoid.The government can take heart, in the circumstances, that Trump’s retraction of his previous endorsement of the Chagos deal appears to be based on at least two false premises.Speaking in the White House on Tuesday evening, he seemed to suggest that the terms of the deal had changed significantly since it was commended by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, in May. That is wrong.He also suggested that the UK was doing it for the money, which does not make sense as one of the m …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn38 minutes agoShareSaveHenry Zeffman,Chief political correspondentandJoe Pike,Politics investigations correspondentShareSaveEPAFor a prime minister who has spent a year focusing on building a warm rapport with the US president, using the authority of the despatch box at Prime Minister’s Questions to declare that he “will not yield” was a big moment.It was a tonal shift even from Monday’s speech in Downing Street.No wonder, given the tirade unleashed by President Trump in Sir Keir Starmer’s direction on his Truth Social platform in the early hours of Tuesday morning.Behind the scenes, Sir Keir had been coming under greater pressure to change his approach to the president.”It is a strategy that has failed on every conceivable level,” one Labour MP said in the hours before PMQs, warning that their constituents were increasingly frustrated by the prime minister’s attempts to build a rapport with Trump.”It gets harder and harder to hold your head up high when you’re campaigning,” the MP said.One minister said they were concerned that history may not judge Sir Keir’s approach kindly.”This is not just about how it looks now,” they said. “In five years time will we look back at this approach and see it as appeasement? See it as a massive error?”The Carney playbookSeveral Labour figures say privately they believe that the prime minister ought to follow the example of Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, who warned in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday that the “old order is not coming back”.He said: “Middle powers must act together because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”Carney’s problems with the US are more acute than the UK’s.In the moments before his post on Truth Social accusing Sir Keir of “stupidity”, Trump posted a map of the US which incorporated not only the US but Canada too, as well as Greenland and Venezuela.Trump appearing to revive his threats towards Canada could pose particular problems for Sir Keir, too. At the heart of Sir Keir’s strategy for handling Trump – a strategy which was seen until this week as one of the clearest triumphs of his time as prime minister – was the use of the Royal Family.On his first visit to the Oval Office to meet Trump last year, Sir Keir whipped from his pocket a letter from the King extending an invitation to Trump for an unprecedented second state visit to the UK.That has now happened but it does not seem to have secured permanent warm relations with Trump.And the King is the King of Canada as well. What does the deterioration in US-Canadian relations mean for the expected visit of the King to the US this year to mark 250 years of its independence?Even as his position toughened rhetorically today, those around Sir Keir remain resistant to pressure for him to deliver the full-throated ‘Love Actually moment’ some in Labour desire. “You can have these fantasies about sticking it to world leaders,” one confidant of the PM said, “but you still have to speak to them the next day. What do you say then?”It seems likely that Sir Keir’s rhetoric in PMQs will sate some Labour MPs for now. But there was a warning from Steve Witherden, a backbencher from the left of the Labour Party, that there will be ongoing pressure for him to go further: Witherden urged retaliatory tariffs on the “thug in the White House” – an approach the prime minister is desperate to avoid.The government can take heart, in the circumstances, that Trump’s retraction of his previous endorsement of the Chagos deal appears to be based on at least two false premises.Speaking in the White House on Tuesday evening, he seemed to suggest that the terms of the deal had changed significantly since it was commended by Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, in May. That is wrong.He also suggested that the UK was doing it for the money, which does not make sense as one of the m …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
