Westminster is preparing for Donald Trump’s second term ahead of the US president’s inauguration in WashingtonGood morning. Donald Trump becomes president of the United States for the second time today and in Westminster, as across the rest of the word, supporters are giddy with excitement, while opponents feel this is a moment for epoch-defining dread. Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader and Britain’s leading Trump evangelist, has got so carried away that he has told an interviewer he thinks there is a 20/25% chance that he could be prime minister by the time Trump leaves office (January 2029). It’s not impossible; but few other people would put his chances as high as one in four.Most people in Labour politics, privately at least, regard Trump with horror, but the government has to work with him and Keir Starmer, who has invested a lot of effort in trying to establish a decent personal relationship with the new president, has issued a statement sending Trump his “warmest congratulations” on his inauguration. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, was on the Today programme this morning and, when asked if he he had changed his mind about Trump since the days when he used to denounce him in the strongest possible terms, he said his approach to foreign policy was grounded in “progressive realism”, taking the world as it is. He went on to praise the Trump he met when he and Starmer had dinner with him in New York in September last year.The Donald Trump I met … had incredible grace, generosity, very keen to be a good host, very funny, very, very, very friendly, very warm, I have to say, about the UK, our royal family, Scotland, his relationship with Scotland, his mother. That was the Donald Trump I found.There was a survey this week – 70% of the world welcomed Donald Trump coming to power, 70% of the world, much of that worried about authoritarian actors, actually quite like the fact that Donald Trump keeps them guessing.I think surrendering the Chagos Islands, or putting the Chagos Islands in a situation where they can easily be coerced, by the Chinese Communist Party for example, I hope it’s a position that we see reversed here by Donald Trump, and by the UK government.The Pentagon, the State Department and the White House under the last administration pored through this deal. There was an interagency process, [they] said it was a good deal. It’s right and proper that the new administration is able to consider it.But having gone through the deal in detail, it’s the right deal to keep the global community safe, and I emphasize the importance of that military base and those assets on Diego Garcia that we’ve been working together with with the United States now for all of my lifetime. Continue reading…
Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2025/jan/20/us-chagos-islands-deal-david-lammy-uk-politics-live-news-updates
Author : Andrew Sparrow
Publish date : 2025-01-20 09:35:00
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US will want Chagos Islands deal reversed, Trump’s ex-national security adviser suggests – UK politics live
