Keir Starmer says he understands what ‘anchors' Donald Trump
He said: 'We are different people and we've got different political backgrounds and leanings, but we do have a good relationship and that comes from a numbers of places.
'I think I do understand what anchors the president, what he really cares about.
'For both of us, we really care about family and there's a point of connection there.'
Sir Keir said in the interview to mark a year in office he has a 'good personal relationship' with Mr Trump, and revealed the first time they spoke was after the then-presidential candidate was shot at a campaign rally in July last year.
He said Mr Trump had returned the phone call a few days after the Prime Minister's brother Nick had died on Boxing Day.
Sir Keir said he secretly visited his 60-year-old brother before and after the general election during his cancer treatment.
Sir Keir Starmer being interviewed by Nick Robinson (Jeff Overs/BBC/PA)
He said: 'It's really hard to lose your brother to cancer. I wanted fiercely to protect him.
'And that's why both before the election and after the election, I went secretly to see him at home, secretly to see him in hospital.
'He was in intensive care for a long time.'
Addressing recent political turmoil, Sir Keir said he will always 'carry the can' as leader after coming under fire over a climbdown on welfare reforms and that he would 'always take responsibility' when asked questions.
'When things go well… the leader gets the plaudits, but when things don't go well, it is really important that the leader carries the can – and that's what I will always do.'
Sir Keir also backed Rachel Reeves and said she would be Chancellor 'for a very long time to come', after the politician was visibly tearful in the House of Commons on Wednesday following a U-turn to welfare reform plans that put an almost £5 billion black hole in her plans.
"It was a personal matter."
Sir Keir Starmer has told @bbcnickrobinson that Rachel Reeves' tears at PMQs had "nothing to do with politics".
The prime minister has backed Rachel Reeves to remain as chancellor in an interview on BBC Radio 4's Political Thinking.#R4Today
— BBC Radio 4 Today (@BBCr4today) July 3, 2025
Ms Reeves said it was a 'personal matter' which had upset her ahead of Prime Minister's Questions.
The Government had seen off the threat of a major Commons defeat over the legislation on Tuesday after shelving plans to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment, the main disability benefit in England.
Sir Keir said he cannot 'pretend… that wasn't a tough day', and stressed the welfare system 'isn't working for the people that matter to me'.
'In the world that isn't politics, it is commonplace for people to look again at a situation and judge it by the circumstances as they now are and make a decision accordingly,' he said of the changes.
'And that is common sense, it's pragmatic, and it's a reflection of who I am.
'It was important that we took our party with us, that we got it right.
'And Labour politicians come into public life because they care deeply about these issues.
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The Guardian
31 minutes ago
- The Guardian
The Gaza discourse has been Vylanised – but that diversionary strategy just doesn't work any more
If you are in the business of anointing monsters, you can see why your eyes would light up at a punk act called Bob Vylan. Until last weekend, sure, it might have been a tough sell to proclaim them as an avatar for Britain's revolting youth: prominent though they might be on the UK's punk scene, they had about about 220,000 monthly listeners on Spotify – a mere 1,000,000 away from a place in the top 10,000. But then, at Glastonbury, they made the most powerful possible case for broad media attention: they said something controversial about Israel's assault on Gaza, and opened up a chance to have a go at the BBC. And so the following morning, on the front page of the Mail on Sunday: 'NOW ARREST PUNK BAND WHO LED 'DEATH TO ISRAELIS' CHANTS AT GLASTONBURY.' Pascal Robinson-Foster, aka Bobby Vylan, had started a round of 'antisemitic chanting' that was broadcast live on the corporation's coverage of the festival, the story explained. Keir Starmer called it 'appalling hate speech'. The calls for the band members' arrest were quickly picked up, and before long the Conservatives were suggesting that the BBC should be prosecuted as well. On Monday, the story splashed in the Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express. In fact, Robinson-Foster hadn't chanted 'Death to Israelis', but 'Death to the IDF', a sharply different proposition, and one focused on the military machine attacking Gaza, the Israeli Defense Forces, rather than Israeli civilians. Nonetheless, the Mail on Sunday's headline elision stuck. In much of the coverage, the idea that the chant was inherently antisemitic wasn't even a question. The assertion was barely explained in any of the front page stories; the BBC and even Glastonbury's Emily Eavis went along with it too. If you were looking for a rationale, the closest you got came from Stephen Pollard in the Mail on Sunday: after comparing the scene to the Nuremberg rallies, he added that 'what they meant – because the IDF is the army of the world's only Jewish state – was 'Death, death to the Jews''. Later, Andrew Neil went further: 'I was going to say that they sometimes seem to have more in common with the Nuremberg rally,' he mused. 'But even the Nazis didn't say 'death to the Jews'.' Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper has ordered that Palestine Action should be banned as a terrorist group for its targeting of buildings and businesses in opposition to Israel's actions in Gaza, even though it has no agenda for violence – and after a last-minute legal challenge to the proscription failed on Friday, supporting them is now a criminal offence. In that environment, any uncertainty about the Bob Vylan story would plainly be treated as apologism for hate speech, or worse, and so there wasn't a lot of it about. In truth, though, a lot of people might have been uncertain. The IDF as metonym for any Jew is not a typical trope in the extremist's lexicon, and the circumstances of the Israeli military's assault on Gaza are the obvious, and urgent, locus of the chant's intended force. Nonetheless, Avon and Somerset police have now opened a criminal investigation. There are, to be sure, cogent objections to raise. Robinson-Foster described a record label boss as a 'Zionist', and while he noted that the executive 'would speak very strongly about his support for Israel', it is reasonable to accuse him of playing into a familiar antisemitic trope, particularly about the music industry. Meanwhile, some Jewish people already alert to a rise in racist hostility towards them may well have felt alarmed by the sight of a crowd chanting against the Israeli army. Sensible people will come to a range of conclusions about those points – but there has been no space for that discussion, because the IDF apparently represents Jewish people everywhere, and everything else gets lost in the shuffle. The death toll in Gaza now stands at more than 57,000, according to figures from the Gaza ministry of health; a robust independent survey recently put the count at almost 84,000. Israeli ministers and officials have given weight to allegations that a genocide is under way with assertions that starving two million Palestinians to death might be 'justified and moral' and descriptions of a forced 'deportation plan'. The amount of aid going into the territory remains a fraction of what is needed. At least 400 Palestinians have been killed recently in incidents involving the IDF while approaching food distribution centres; Haaretz reported that soldiers were ordered to fire on them deliberately, a claim denied by Israel as 'vicious lies'. Meanwhile, in the UK, the only adjacent story deemed worthy of front page attention is the conduct of an obscure punk-rap group from Ipswich. On 17 June, at least 59 Palestinians were killed after the IDF fired on a crowd waiting for flour trucks near Khan Younis. The next day's Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sun and Daily Express featured no coverage of that story at all. Perhaps they would have done if the BBC had broadcast it live. It would be understandable, then, to conclude that the obsession with Bob Vylan – and Kneecap, and Palestine Action – matters mainly for its diversionary force. But there is something more at work here. It isn't just that people are angry that the catastrophe in Gaza isn't being given due attention: it is that their encounters with observable reality are being flatly denied. The choice framed by these stories is between being an anti-racist, or even an anti-terrorist, and being horrified by the slaughter of thousands of brown civilians in a military siege. For anyone who routinely sees videos of the aftermath of Israeli violence against civilians in their social media feeds, this is enough to make you feel crazy. Across the UK and the US, there is increasing evidence that people who object to what we might call the Vylanising of the Gaza discourse are finding their voice. In the general election last year, Labour lost five seats to pro-Gaza candidates, and forfeited about a third of its vote in some Muslim majority areas. In New York, Zohran Mamdani won an underdog victory in the Democratic mayoral primary despite attempts to caricature him as an advocate of 'jihad'. Some 55% of the British public opposes Israel's military campaign in Gaza, and 45% view Israel's actions as genocidal; less than half of Americans are now more sympathetic to Israel than to Palestinians, and almost 60% of Democrats are now more supportive of Palestinians. Among people under 40, those numbers only go up. Those people have been told that Gaza protests are hate marches; they can see it's not true. They have been told that US campus protesters are largely motivated by antisemitism; they can see it's not true. They have been told that Palestine Action is a terrorist organisation because it spray painted military aircraft; they can see it's not true. They have been repeatedly told, by Benjamin Netanyahu, that opposition to Israel's war is antisemitic; they can see it's not true. They have been told that the British government finds Israel's actions 'intolerable'; they can see it's not true. Now they are being told that opposing the IDF is antisemitic, that the Glastonbury crowd is more virulent than the one at Nuremberg, and that direct action is a form of terrorism. They can see all that's not true, either, and however far their view is from the front pages, they know that they are far from alone. Archie Bland is the editor of the Guardian's First Edition newsletter
The Herald Scotland
an hour ago
- The Herald Scotland
Leading KC raises concerns over accused rights in rape trials
However, Mr Ross believes that he should draw attention to the situation for fear of the impact of silence upon the delivery of justice. "We have reached the stage where the victim has lied about things and the court has not allowed the defence to put that before the jury. "How can it be said that someone has had a fair trial when it's been proved that the complainer lied about something important in the course of the inquiry and that was not allowed to be introduced as evidence?" he told The Herald. "There are serious concerns that people are not getting a fair trial when they are not being given the opportunity to provide evidence which might support their innocence". He added: "The lawyers who are taking on these rape and sexual assault cases tend to be less experienced, more junior members of the bar. It's difficult for them to come out and make a claim of this type. "They have their whole career in front of them. At some point they might want to go for a role as a sheriff or a judge, and they will understandably be concerned that if they speak out or are seen to be publicly critical of the criminal justice system that will damage their chances. "But many many lawyers are raising the matter with me. When you hear a lawyer complaining in court about some decision that has gone against them, 90% of the time it's this issue. It is a massive concern." READ MORE: The situation revolves around what evidence is allowed to be heard in open court before a jury. Sometimes known as "rape shield" laws, specific provisions to regulate the use of sexual history evidence were first introduced in Scotland by the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1985. These provisions were later repeated in sections 274 and 275 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. In response to concerns about their operation, the provisions in the 1995 Act were replaced by new sections 274 and 275 in 2002. The High Court in Glasgow (Image: PA) The provisions are designed to protect complainers giving evidence from irrelevant, intrusive and often distressing questioning. Sections 274 and 275 of the 1995 Act were intended to protect complainers in sexual offence trials from inappropriate questioning about their sexual history and wider character and lifestyle when giving evidence in court. In particular, they were designed to discourage the use of evidence seen as of limited relevance, where the primary purpose of the evidence is to undermine the credibility of the complainer or divert attention from the issues that require to be determined at trial. There are strict rules over what evidence can be heard in rape trials (Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto) However, Mr Ross said the manner in which the rules have been interpreted by the court has been problematic with debate centring on what evidence is judged to be relevant or not. An application to lead evidence of the type struck at by Section 274 must be made at a preliminary hearing – almost always before full preparation for the trial had has been completed - putting the defence at a huge disadvantage. "In the 1985 act the thinking was - why should you be allowed to ask the woman about sex with another man or sex with the accused on a different occasion but in 2002 the scope was extended to include non sexual behaviour," he said. He continued: "At the preliminary hearing you might not have all the case papers, won't know for sure what the complainer is likely to say in evidence, as it might be a year before the trial. "The need for an application within a strict time limit made it very difficult for defence lawyers." He said further restrictions to rules over the admissibility of evidence had since been made in case law. "In short it became extremely difficult to know what you were allowed to ask," said Mr Ross. "Every day you were hearing examples of people saying they thought a piece of evidence was relevant but the judge has ruled that it would not be allowed. "Defendants would be going around with messages, photographs, things they thought would prove them to be innocent and the judges would not allow them to tell the jury about those pieces of exculpatory evidence." Mr Ross went on to say a number of Scottish rape cases relating to the admissibility of evidence were currently before the Supreme Court having had appeals against conviction dismissed. A number of Scottish cases are before the Supreme Court for consideration. (Image: Dan Kitwood) In one of the cases the victim alleged that the accused had raped her when she was 13, claiming she became pregnant and given birth to a child. However, there was no evidence that she had become pregnant or given birth - a matter that the accused wanted to present to the jury. His lawyer had taken the view that it was extremely unlikely that the trial court would allow such evidence to be presented – and the Scottish appeal court agreed with that assessment and refused his appeal. Mr Ross said a second case at the Supreme Court revolved around a man convicted of rape following a work night out. The man was with the woman, whom he supervised, in a pub where both were drinking. "There was apparently CCTV evidence showing the complainer beckoning the accused into a disabled toilet where they had sex," said Mr Ross. "They both later left the bar, got a taxi to his house and woke up next morning in bed together." The woman alleged she was raped. "He was interviewed by police and explained that events at the pub exactly as they had been captured by the CCTV. "He was then charged with rape in the disabled pub toilet and rape in the house." "But the prosecutor became aware that the judge may allow CCTV evidence from the pub, so dropped the pub charge, with the result that the defence was not allowed to lead evidence about what had happened in the pub. His account of what happened in the pub was entirely supported by the CCTV evidence. "It supported his credibility but he wasn't allowed to put the CCTV evidence before the jury as the court ruled that it wasn't relevant to the charges at his house." Mr Ross went on to say that he didn't "accept there is a low conviction rate for rape or sexual assault" as there is a lack of relevant data. He addition he suggested that it was misleading to compare conviction in rape cases rapes to those in other types of crime such as murder. "In a murder case there might be 15 sources of evidence, from eyewitnesses, DNA, finger prints in murder cases, while in a rape case just there is very often only one source of evidence - namely the person making the complaint. "So it's entirely unsurprising that there are lower conviction rates for rape than murder." A spokesperson for Rape Crisis Scotland said: 'We wish Thomas Ross KC would express equal concern about ensuring justice for survivors of sexual violence. 'The conviction for rape cases involving a single complainer is only 24%. The overall conviction rate for all crime is 86%. Too many women are being completely let down by the Scottish criminal justice system. "We continue to hear from women about how distressing their treatment is at the hands of some defence lawyers.' Mr Ross responded: "I've met many women who feel completely let by the Scottish criminal justice system. I've met many men who feel completely let down by the criminal justice system too - including men who believe that the court's interpretation of section 275 deprived them of a fair trial. "With so many people feeling completely let down by the system - maybe its time to have another look at the way it operates." A spokeswoman for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service said it would be inappropriate for the Judicial Office to comment on Mr Ross's personal views. A Scottish Government spokesperson said: 'Everyone has the right to a fair trial and to appeal against a conviction or sentence. There are well-established rules on what evidence can be led in sexual offences trials, and clear routes to challenge how these are applied.'
Wales Online
an hour ago
- Wales Online
Tell us what you think of Starmer's Labour party after one year in UK government
Tell us what you think of Starmer's Labour party after one year in UK government One year has passed since Keir Starmer was elected to power on July 5, 2024 Today marks a year since Sir Keir Starmer became UK prime minister (Image: PA ) Labour may have ruled Wales for 26 years in the Senedd, but when the UK party won the 2024 General Election, it marked their return to power in Westminster for the first time since 2010. It was a landslide victory, Keir Starmer's party securing one of its biggest ever majorities in the House of Commons. In Wales, they won the majority of seats but saw its vote share fall in many areas and the party lost key target seats to Plaid Cymru. A year on there are many causes for concern in the party, dividing party members and politicians both in the UK and Welsh branch. You can read our political editor Ruth Mosalski's report of the Welsh Labour conference this week here: Fear and loathing in Labour: A party on the edge, angry at Drakeford, Morgan and Starmer. For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here . Add to the debate in our comments secton below. Article continues below Tell us how you feel in our poll below or you can open it here:
