Keir Starmer has noticeably hardened his rhetoric towards Donald Trump, telling the Commons that the US president’s condemnation of the Chagos Islands deal with Mauritius was intended to weaken the UK’s resolve over Greenland.
In a sometimes angry exchange with Kemi Badenoch at prime minister’s questions, Starmer denounced the Conservative leader’s use of Trump’s words to push back against the Chagos deal, saying the president had not been sincere in his objections.
“President Trump deployed words on Chagos yesterday that were different to his previous words of welcome and support,” he said, adding that the US leader had used them “for the express purpose of putting pressure on me and Britain in relation to my values and principles, on the future of Greenland.
“He wants me to yield on my position, and I’m not going to do so. Given that that was his express purpose, I’m surprised the leader of the opposition has jumped on the bandwagon.”
Starmer had already condemned Trump’s threat this week to impose escalating trade tariffs on eight European nations who had sent troops to Greenland, including the UK, if they refused his demand that the US be allowed to take control of the vast island, which is a largely autonomous part of Denmark.
He has said that reciprocal tariffs or other direct retaliation against the US would be a mistake, but his language on Wednesday was notably more pointed against a president he has generally sought to flatter or cajole rather than challenge.
Badenoch and the leaders of all the other main UK parties have expressed opposition to any US designs on Greenland without the wish of its people, but Starmer argued the Conservative leader’s adoption of Trump’s comments about the Chagos islands undermined that stance.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Nigel Farage reiterated that Greenland’s sovereignty should be respected, while arguing that the world would be more secure if the US took over the territory.
The Reform UK leader said: “I have no doubt that the world would be a better, more secure place if a strong America was in Greenland, because of the geopolitics of the high north, because of the retreating ice caps and because of the continued expansionism of Russian icebreakers, of Chinese investment.
“So yes, would America owning Greenland be better for the world in terms of safety and stronger for Nato? It would. However, if you believe in Brexit, and if you believe in celebrating America’s 250th birthday, if you believe in the nation states and not globalist structures, you believe in sovereignty.
“And if you believe in sovereignty, you believe in the principle of national self-determination.”
In a post on his Truth Social platform overnight on Tuesday, Trump reversed previous US backing for the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a plan intended to secure the future of the major UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Indian Ocean archipelago.
“Shockingly, our ‘brilliant’ Nato Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” he wrote, amid a flurry of posts about Greenland.
“The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of GREAT STUPIDITY, and is another in a very long line of National Security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired.”
After Badenoch questioned Starmer on Trump’s stance, the prime minister said she was undermining political unity over Greenland.
“I had understood her position to be that she supported the government’s position on the future of Greenland,” he said. “Now she appears to support words by President Trump to undermine the government’s position on the future of Greenland. She’s chosen naked opportunism over the national interest.”
After Badenoch argued this was not the case, Starmer reiterated that Trump’s words on the Chagos Islands “expressly intended to put pressure on me to yield on my principles” over Greenland.
“What he said about Chagos was literally in the same sentence as what he said about Greenland,” he said. “That was his purpose, and the future of Greenland is a binary issue that is splitting the world at the moment with material consequences.”
