"Since the turn of the year, as the US president has shown his imperialist ambition, the prime minister's softly-softly approach to his unpredictable friend in the White House has come under increased strain. His delicately calibrated position doing diplomacy in private and building a close relationship in the hope of having greater influence blew up spectacularly on Saturday when Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on European allies opposed to the US taking over Greenland."
"On Monday, at a hastily arranged press conference in Downing Street, Starmer insisted that he still hoped to find a pragmatic, sensible and sustained route through the latest crisis and would prefer calm discussion to gesture politics that could damage the transatlantic relationship. Yet there was also a subtle toughening of his message: that US tariffs would damage the British economy and were in no one's interests"
Keir Starmer moved from a privately diplomatic stance towards a firmer public response after Donald Trump threatened 25% tariffs on European allies over Greenland. Starmer called tariffs on allies pursuing NATO collective security 'completely wrong' and signalled a preference for calm discussion over gesture politics to protect the transatlantic relationship. At a Downing Street press conference he warned US tariffs would harm the British economy and kept the possibility of retaliatory tariffs on the table. The shift marked one of the first forceful public rebukes of the US president and reflected strain on close UK–US ties.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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