21 hours Ago By Nicholas Cecil
Emmanuel Macron has beaten Sir Keir Starmer in a diplomatic race for a meeting with Donald Trump at the White House . The French president will fly to America for talks with Trump on Monday. Sir Keir will head to Washington later in the week amid questions over the state of the so-called Special Relationship between the US and UK.
The timings will be seen as a rebuff to the Labour Government which includes several Cabinet ministers who have heavily criticised Trump in the past. They include Foreign Secretary David Lammy who previously branded Trump a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” and “narcissistic”. The Government is seeking to build ties with the Trump administration, appointing Lord Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador to Washington, though, he described the now US president as “reckless” and a “bully” in an interview in 2019.
French politicians have also not shied away from criticising Trump. Ahead of his meeting, Mr Macron warned the US president not to be “weak” in the face of the threat from Vladimir Putin ’s regime. “How can you be credible with China if you’re weak with Putin?” the French president said, during a question-and-answer session on social media.
Trump has stunned European capitals with his apparent attempts to cosy up to Putin and strike a Ukraine peace deal which could benefit both Russia and America, possibly at the expense of Kyiv. The US president has unleashed an extraordinary tirade against Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky , branding him a “dictator” and claiming his country, rather than Putin, started the war. Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine three years ago in the mistaken belief that Russian soldiers would be welcomed as liberators.
But Trump has been accused of lapping up Kremlin propaganda about the war and Mr Zelensky’s popularity in Ukraine. Sir Keir has defended Mr Zelensky as the democratically-elected leader of Ukraine. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said that claiming that Ukraine started the conflict is like saying Japan attacked America at Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Trump is also threatening to impose hefty tariffs on the European Union, with the UK possibly also being hit with levies for imposing VAT on imports from the US, even though this tax also applies to good manufactured in Britain. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to be hosted by Trump at the White House. Trump’s envoy for the Ukraine conflict, retired general Keith Kellogg, met Mr Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday but there was no immediate word on whether their talks had helped smooth over an unprecedented wartime rift between the once firm allies.
Ukraine’s president had earlier struck a conciliatory tone after accusing Trump of repeating Russian disinformation in response to the US president’s accusation that Ukraine had started the three-year-old war with Russia and his “dictator” jibe. Trump, in office for just a month, is pushing for a quick deal to end the war and has alarmed Washington’s European allies by leaving them and Ukraine out of initial talks with Russia. His vice president, JD Vance, said on Thursday he believed an end to the conflict was near and there was no stopping the war without speaking to Russia.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, meanwhile, told a White House press briefing that Zelenskiy’s insults were unacceptable and that the Ukrainian president needed to come back to the table and discuss a previously floated deal to give the United States access to Ukraine’s minerals resources, reportedly to a value of $500 billion. Former British Defence Secretary Sir Ben Wallace has warned of a “stench” of Nazi appeasement in the way Trump’s administration is seeking a peace deal..
