(March 27): UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer suggested he won’t be bullied by Donald Trump in a further demonstration of how the US president’s war on Iran has frayed the so-called special relationship between their two countries.
“My own view is that a lot of what is said and done has been to put pressure on me to change my mind, but I’m not going to do so,” Starmer told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast when asked about recent criticism from Trump. “When it came to the Iran war, I’ve said we’re not going to get dragged in because my judgement is that’s not in the interests of our country.”
Trump has repeatedly tried to strong-arm Starmer to change tack on issues including the extraction of oil in the North Sea and the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, the site of a joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia. The president had sought to use the base to carry out the initial US attack on Iran. The two leaders have also clashed in recent months over Greenland and tariffs.
At the end of the interview, the British prime minister was asked what advice he would give to himself in 2024 as he began his premiership. “I’m not going to be pushed around by other people,” he said. “I’m not going to be persuaded to do things that I don’t think are right for our country.”
As Starmer was conducting his interview on Thursday, Trump was speaking at a Cabinet meeting at the White House, where he again criticised the British premier. Trump said he was “disappointed” in Starmer because he “did something that was shocking: he didn’t want to help us.” He also dismissed UK aircraft carriers as “toys” compared to the US fleet.
Alongside Starmer’s legal concerns about the attack on Iran, Britain has taken a sharp economic hit from the conflict and is set to be the biggest loser out of the Group of Seven (G7), a report said on Thursday. “When the US catches a cold, a lot of other countries around the world catch pneumonia,” Matthew McGuire, former US executive director of the World Bank, said on Sky News on Friday. “We’re going to see widespread damage for a long time to come.”
See also: Europe’s economy starting to feel pain from Trump’s Iran war
Britain’s Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is meeting her G7 counterparts, including America’s Marco Rubio, in France on Friday. She said the UK’s priority remains a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz: “What we need is a partnership, including the diplomacy, including some of the discussions that we will have today, because, frankly, Iran cannot be able to just hold the the global economy hostage.”
In the initial stages of the war four weeks ago, Starmer cited concerns about the legality of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. But when the Islamic Republic retaliated with a barrage of attacks on UK allies in the Gulf, the prime minister partially retreated, allowing the US to use British bases for “specific and limited” defensive purposes by targeting Iranian missile facilities. He later expanded that remit to include efforts to degrade Iranian capabilities being used to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
The initial call made by Starmer still appeared to rankle Trump on Thursday, when he referred to Diego Garcia.
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“When we needed the island to land that beautiful B-2 bomber, we were told we can’t use it,” Trump said. “We’d have to fly back to Missouri, which is a 17-hour flight, as opposed to a couple of hours. And I said, ‘you got to be kidding.’ Not good. They made a big mistake.”
Trump said that despite disagreements with Starmer, he still expects to welcome King Charles III on a state visit later this year, describing the monarch as “a friend of mine” and “a great gentleman”.
“He’s going to be here very soon, as you know, we’re going to have a state dinner,” Trump said. “It’s going to be great.”
In his interview, Starmer also:
- Said “nobody was criticising me more than myself” over his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as US ambassador despite the Labour grandee’s known ties to the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein
- Said he expects his former deputy, Angela Rayner, to be “playing a leading role in this Labour government” in the future
- Said he intends to lead Labour into the next election, where the electorate will judge him
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