'Spineless': Quarter of Keir Starmer's Cabinet blasted Donald Trump's last UK trip
A motion signed by 106 MPs before Trump's last visit poured scorn on the commander in chief, highlighting his climate-denying extremism and called on the then-prime minister Theresa May to cancel his invitation.
Put forward by Stephen Doughty, now a Foreign Office minister, it also slammed Trump's comments about Sadiq Khan – who was at the time and remains Mayor of London.
Trump had previously called Khan a 'stone-cold loser who should focus on crime in London' and in 2016 challenged him to take an IQ test.
It comes as Trump continues his trip to Scotland, visiting his golf courses in Aberdeen and [[Aberdeen]]shire and having meetings with [[Keir Starmer]] and John Swinney. His second state visit is expected in September.
Doughty's motion was sponsored by Alison McGovern, Angela Eagle and Catherine West, who are now ministers in the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Foreign Office, respectively.
Cabinet ministers who backed the scathing Trump take-down include Health Secretary Wes Streeting, Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Scottish Secretary Ian Murray and Labour Party chair Ellie Reeves (above).
Also from the current Cabinet are Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens, Environment Secretary Steve Reed and Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons.
Additionally, 13 current ministers and Government whips signed the motion and two former ministers: Tulip Siddiq and Anneliese Dodds.
The motion said the Commons 'deplores the record of US president Donald Trump, including his misogyny, racism and xenophobia'.
It went on to condemn 'his previous comments on women, refugees and torture' and his 'lack of action on climate change and failure to support the Paris Climate Change Deal'.
The motion concluded by noting the 'historical significance and honour that comes with the choice to offer a full state visit to an individual' and demanded that May revoke Trump's invitation.
Trump's first state visit to the UK was met with immense controversy, with then-Commons speaker John Bercow making an unprecedented intervention on the matter, telling MPs: 'Before the imposition of the migrant ban, I would myself have been strongly opposed to an address by president Trump in Westminster Hall.
'After the imposition of the migrant ban, I am even more strongly opposed to an address by president Trump in Westminster Hall.'
His comments were applauded by the opposition benches after saying that Parliament should demonstrate its 'opposition to racism and sexism'.
The Scottish Secretary (above) last week claimed that Trump could expect a 'warm welcome' in Scotland – despite the police saying they would be managing their biggest operation, due in part to major protests, since the Queen's death.
Murray said: 'The office of the president of the United States and the office of the Prime Minister are ones that work very, very closely together, and should do, because it's in our national interest to do so.'
Lammy has also changed his tune dramatically on Trump since his first presidency. In 2018, the then-backbencher called Trump a 'tyrant' and 'a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath'.
Confronted about his past comments, following Trump's re-election, Lammy dismissed them as 'old news', claiming one would 'struggle to find any politician" who had not said some "pretty ripe things" about Trump in the past.
He added: 'I think that what you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things.
'And I am Foreign Secretary. There are things I know now that I didn't know back then.'
Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie (above) told the Sunday National: 'Labour's capitulation to [[Donald Trump]] is spineless, unprincipled, immoral and dangerous.
'[[Donald Trump]] is a dangerous authoritarian who is actively trying to dismantle democratic institutions, has threatened to invade our allies in Canada and Greenland, is advocating ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and is abducting innocent people off the street to send to foreign torture camps.
'But instead of standing up for those who are under attack, Labour have chosen to give him, in the words of Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, a 'warm welcome'. In doing so, they lend his agenda international credibility, helping him to expand it at home and abroad.
'If Labour can't even stand up against Trump, they don't stand for anything at all.'
Labour were approached for comment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
US to impose 15% tariffs on South Korea as part of trade deal, Donald Trump says
President Donald Trump has said the US will charge a 15% tariff on imports from South Korea as part of an agreement with the Asian trading partner that avoids even higher levies. 'I am pleased to announce that the United States of America has agreed to a Full and Complete Trade Deal with the Republic of Korea,' Trump said on Truth Social on Wednesday. The South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, said on Thursday the deal would put South Korea on an equal or better footing compared with other countries. He also said the countries had agreed to set up a $350bn investment fund, out of which $150bn was aimed at a shipbuilding partnership. Trump had said that as part of the arrangement, South Korea would invest $350bn in the US in projects selected by him and purchase $100bn of liquefied natural gas and other energy products. It was not immediately clear how the investment deals would be structured or over what time frame. Trump said additional investments would be announced later. Lee would visit the White House 'within the next two weeks' for a meeting with Trump, the US president added. He also said South Korea would accept American products – including cars, trucks and agriculture – into its markets and impose no import duties on them.
Spectator
35 minutes ago
- Spectator
Make Trump Britain's prime minister
When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America's hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I'm even guilty of some anti–American prejudice myself and wrote a memoir in which I tried to convey that my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s was because I wasn't willing to sell my soul to Mammon. Well, I take it all back. Having watched Donald Trump's performance at the joint press conference with the Prime Minister on Monday, I wish he was our leader and not Sir Keir Starmer. On all the key topics the President touched on – immigration, net zero, the awfulness of Sadiq Khan – I am in violent agreement with him. I would now like nothing more than for Britain to be the 51st state. It's not just because I'm more closely politically aligned with Trump than Starmer. If Britain was part of the United States, Trump wouldn't hesitate to start deporting undocumented migrants, as he's done in the US, where (according to the White House) illegal immigration has fallen by 95 per cent since he became the 47th President. All those tedious legal obligations we have under the European Convention on Human Rights and the Refugee Convention would be swatted aside like so many pesky flies. If the price to pay is renaming the stretch of water between Britain and France the 'American Channel', so be it. When it comes to energy, I can think of no greater boon to the British economy than re-starting oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, lifting the fracking ban and exploiting our mineral rights in the South Atlantic. It's our insane net-zero policy and our resulting electricity prices that is partly responsible for our GDP per capita being lower than Mississippi's, the poorest state in the union. Incidentally, average GDP per capita was higher in the UK than the US as recently as 2007. We passed the Climate Change Act the following year, around the same time as our long, ignominious decline began. Above all, there's the First Amendment. Oh, how I wish the speech of British citizens enjoyed the same protections as that of Americans. All the fetters on freedom of expression that have sprung up like knotweed since the passing of the Race Relations Act in 1965 – buried in nasty little clauses in the Public Order Act 1986, the Malicious Communications Act 1988, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, the Communications Act 2003 and the Online Safety Act 2023 – would not survive a First Amendment challenge. The moment we became the 51st state, they would all be placed in what Americans call 'the circular file', i.e. the bin. Of course, it won't ever happen – and I don't want this to read like a counsel of despair. I still hold out a sliver of hope that a future British government will do its best to implement all of these policies, although stopping the boats, scrapping net zero and restoring free speech would be a good deal easier if we were the 51st state. In the words of Paul Goodman, a Conservative colleague in the House of Lords, if a ministry led by Nigel Farage tried to do any of these things, it 'would be met on day one by an institutional intifada'. A radical, reforming government might have the intestinal fortitude to stand up to this onslaught, but, like Lord Goodman, I fear it would soon be seen off by the closed ranks of the Establishment, much like Liz Truss's was. But I have a solution. We all know Trump to be an ambitious man who will be reluctant to surrender power in 2028. So why shouldn't he become a British citizen and run against Sir Keir in 2029, either as the newly installed head of Reform UK or as the leader of a new political party? His mother was born in Scotland, so he's eligible, and unlike in the US, you don't have to be born in Britain to occupy our highest political office. I imagine the prospect of addressing the House of Commons as our prime minister will appeal to him as an act of sweet revenge after being denied the opportunity to address parliament during his forthcoming state visit. If anyone can take on the Blob, the Donald can. Kemi Badenoch can be deputy prime minister and Nigel our ambassador in Washington (after being given a hereditary peerage). Mr President, if you're reading this, I want you to know I stand ready to serve. Let's make Britain great again.
Spectator
36 minutes ago
- Spectator
The demise of South Park
President Trump has a very small willy. His boyfriend is Satan. He's a con man who will sue you for billions on the flimsiest of pretexts but will probably settle for a few hundred million. If this is your idea of cutting-edge satire then you are going to love the new season of South Park, which includes a number of scenes of Trump stripping off in his White House bedroom and trying to interest the devil in his minuscule appendage. But if I were Paramount+ and I'd just signed a $1.5 billion deal for the exclusive five-year rights to South Park, I think I'd be feeling a bit shortchanged by the première of the show's 27th season. Sure, you could argue that South Park was always this way: the first episode (in 1997) was, after all, titled 'Cartman Gets An Anal Probe'. But though I yield to few in my fondness for crass, puerile, broad-brush humour – my second-favourite moment being the gross-out scene far too disgusting to explain, where Randy blames the mess on his computer screen as 'ectoplasm' from a passing 'spooky ghost' – I fear that the once fearlessly outrageous show has long since lost its game. Obviously you're now wondering what my favourite moment is. This has to be the one where Randy is playing Wheel of Fortune and the category is 'People Who Annoy You'. After his letter guesses, the puzzle spells 'N_GGERS'. Unfortunately, Randy guesses the wrong answer. It is, of course, 'NAGGERS'. In fairness, part of South Park's problem is that it has become the victim of changing mores. When it began, political correctness – later to mutate into the even more nauseating, domineering and absurd cult of 'woke' – was in its pomp. The environment for the kind of satire displayed in the classic 'Death Camp of Tolerance' episode ('People of all colours and creeds holding hands beneath a rainbow') was correspondingly target-rich. But with the arrival of Trump's aggressive second term, those days are gone. Indeed, this is the running joke of season 27 so far, which begins with Cartman discovering that his favourite comedy show – National Public Radio (NPR), the one where you get to laugh at whiny liberals being liberal and whiny – has been terminated by presidential fiat. What is the point of being Cartman, he wonders, if no one finds his comments offensive any more? He puts on a T-shirt that says 'Woke is Dead' and plans to commit suicide in a pact with Butters – whether Butters likes it or not. Even South Park Elementary School's aggressively woke headteacher PC Principal has begun drinking the Trump Kool Aid. Much to the children's horror, he announces in assembly that his initials now stand for 'Power Christian' – and as affirmation of his new-found faith, he has decided to invite Jesus into the school. Any children who won't allow Jesus to join them on their lunch table will be severely punished. The Jesus scenes aren't interesting or funny. Having introduced the character mainly, I presume, to reaffirm its commitment to sacrilege, the episode can't quite decide what to do with him. Jesus just floats around the school with his beard, white robes and halo, being meek but not really saying much until the end where in a mystifying and ill-thought-through scene, he delivers a 'Sermon' to the South Park residents explaining that he's there under duress. This is ridiculous. He's the actual Son of God. Literally nothing is beyond his capability. He is brave, intelligent, well read, wise, charismatic, articulate, adored by women, totally cool and utterly based. There's no way someone like that is going to get trapped against his will, for however convoluted a reason, in South Park Elementary. Jesus presents a problem for satirists because, being flawless, he has no weak points that can be exaggerated for comedic effect. In the past, South Park has got round this by treating him as a superhero, deceptively mild but not to be messed with ('I'm packing,' he says in an early appearance, revealing the array of weaponry beneath his robes). Here it's as if the South Park team has lost its nerve: it dare not show Jesus being truly amazing because that might open them to the charge of being insufficiently irreverent. And if that's the case, they are right to worry, for the whole episode is like one giant punch pulled. There are few surer signs that you've sold out to the Establishment than when your edgy comedy series with the crass jokes and badly animated characters earns you $300 million a year. Trump and the Trump administration won't be offended by this satirical-target-missing homage masquerading as critique: they will adore it.
