Keir Starmer has issued an unprecedented rebuke to Donald Trump for his “insulting and frankly appalling” remarks about British troops in Afghanistanand suggested he should apologise.
After a week of fractious relations with the White House, Starmer said he was not surprised that relatives of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan were hurt by Trump claiming they avoided the frontline.
Starmer’s critical intervention marks an escalation of tensions with Trump’s administration after the president had earlier in the week criticised the UK for giving up the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. On Friday night, the government was forced to delay its bill on the Chagos Islands in the House of Lords.
Labour sources insisted it was a temporary pause because Tories had tried to wreck the bill but it comes after Trump said it was a great act of stupidity, with suggestions the US may be able to block the transfer due to a 1961 treaty.
Starmer’s decision to call the president’s Afghanistan remarks “appalling” risks a further diplomatic rupture with the White House, but No 10 made the decision to speak out amid fury among veterans groups and the families of soldiers who lost their lives.
After a day of mounting outrage around the world over the US president’s claim that British and Nato troops who fought in Afghanistan avoided the frontlines, he paid tribute to the 457 members of the armed services who lost their lives during the conflict.
“I will never forget their courage, their bravery and the sacrifice that they made for their country,” the prime minister said on Friday. “There are many also who were injured, some with life-changing injuries.
“And so I consider President Trump’s remarks to be insulting and frankly appalling, and I’m not surprised they caused such hurt to the loved ones of those who were killed or injured.”
Starmer calls Trump’s comments on Nato and Afghanistan ‘insulting’ – video
Asked if he would call for an apology from the president, Starmer said: “If I had misspoken in that way or said those words, I would certainly apologise.”
But the prime minister stressed the importance of the “very close” relationship with the US for Britain’s security, adding: “It is because of that relationship that we fought alongside the Americans for our values in Afghanistan. And it was in that context that people lost their lives or suffered terrible injuries, fighting for freedom, fighting with our allies for what we believe in.”
Trump’s suggestion in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that Nato troops had stayed “a little off the frontlines” in Afghanistan prompted widespread condemnation across the political spectrum and resurfaced questions about his own avoidance of military service in Vietnam.
The president has previously been criticised for avoiding being conscripted to fight in Vietnam after being diagnosed with bone spurs in his heels – a medical claim that has been subject to significant doubt.
People have pointed to Donald Trump’s medical exemption from fighting in the Vietnam war after his recent comments. Photograph: Francis Chung/EPA
In the interview, Trump said: “[Nato will] say they sent some troops to Afghanistan … and they did, they stayed a little back, a little off the frontlines.”
Speaking in Davos on Wednesday, he made similar claims against the 32-member military alliance, saying: “I know them all very well. I’m not sure that they’d be there. I know we’d be there for them. I don’t know that they would be there for us.”
A total of 3,486 Nato troops died in the 20-year Afghanistan conflict, of whom 2,461 were US service personnel. Canada recorded 165 deaths, including civilians.
Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, accused Trump of “denigrating” British troops and said his comments were “flat-out nonsense”. Posting on X shortly before Starmer’s afternoon broadcast, the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage, said: “Donald Trump is wrong. For 20 years our armed forces fought bravely alongside America’s in Afghanistan.”
The Liberal Democrats urged Starmer to summon the US ambassador “over this insult to our brave troops”, with the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, accusing Trump of avoiding military service. “How dare he question their sacrifice. Farage and all the others still fawning over Trump should be ashamed,” he said. It is understood there has not been any call between No 10 and Trump and the UK is not considering admonishing the US ambassador.
The defence secretary, John Healey, said the UK and Nato allies had “answered the US call”, and the war dead should “be remembered for who they were: heroes who gave their lives in service of our nation”.
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Without referring to Trump by name, the armed forces minister, Al Carns, a former marine who served and led during four tours in Afghanistan and was awarded the military cross in 2011, said the claims were “utterly ridiculous”, and invited anyone believing the remarks to meet him and some of the bereaved families.
The Duke of Sussex, who undertook two frontline tours to Afghanistan, said the “sacrifices” of British soldiers “deserve to be spoken about truthfully and with respect”.
“I served there. I made lifelong friends there. And I lost friends there,” said Prince Harry. “Thousands of lives were changed for ever. Mothers and fathers buried sons and daughters. Children were left without a parent. Families are left carrying the cost.”
Diane Dernie, whose son Ben Parkinson sustained horrific injuries when an army Land Rover hit a mine near Musa Qala in 2006, said the president’s comments were “beyond belief” and urged Starmer to “call him out”.
L/Bdr Ben Parkinson with his mother, Diane Dernie, and stepfather, Andrew. Photograph: Fiona Hanson/PA
She said: “Come and look at us, the life that Ben leads 19-and-a-half years on, still fighting for his care, still fighting for him to have a decent life, recovering from a recent operation.
“To hear this man say: ‘Oh, well, you just fannied about behind the frontlines’ … It’s the ultimate insult.”
Trump’s remarks also drew international criticism. The Polish foreign minister, Radosław Sikorski, said: “No one has the right to mock the service of our soldiers.”
Writing in the Guardian, Adam Price, the Danish writer who created the TV series Borgen, said: “How utterly insulting for the families, still mourning their dead, to hear the ingratitude of a US president so ignorant of their loss.” Denmark, which has been at loggerheads with the US over Trump’s designs on Greenland, had 44 combat deaths in Afghanistan, the most per capita outside the US.
Calvin Bailey, a Labour MP and former RAF officer who served alongside US special operations units in Afghanistan, said Trump’s claim “bears no resemblance to the reality experienced by those of us who served there”.
Labour MP Calvin Bailey is a former RAF officer who served in Afghanistan. Photograph: Mrs Sharron Floyd/Sharron Floyd/MOD
The Conservative MP Ben Obese-Jecty, who served in Afghanistan as a captain in the Royal Yorkshire Regiment, said it was “sad to see our nation’s sacrifice, and that of our Nato partners, held so cheaply by the president of the United States”.
The former head of the British army Lord Dannatt condemned the comments on TalkTV, saying: “He has got the disrespect and outrageous choice of words to say that we hung back from the frontline. My God, we were certainly on the frontline, as 457 young people died.”
Stephen Stewart, a former soldier and an author and journalist, said Trump’s comments were “as offensive as they are inaccurate”, while Richard Streatfeild, a former army major in Afghanistan and now a Liberal Democrat councillor, said: “To be told that your service is not as demanding or as difficult as the Americans’ is untrue and deeply insulting.”
The US remains the only country to have invoked article 5 of Nato’s collective security provision, activated after the 11 September terrorist attacks in 2001.
Trump has also faced criticism in the US. The former Nato supreme allied commander James Stavridis said hundreds of allied troops had died under his command on the frontlines in Afghanistan. “I honour their memory every single day,” said the retired US Navy admiral.
Nicholas Burns, a former US ambassador to China, described Trump’s remarks as “shameful”, adding: “We need our allies but are driving them away.”
Sami Sadat, the former commanding general of Afghan Special Operation Corps, said Trump was wrong, adding that he was “grateful to each and every one of the Nato countries who helped us”.
Late on Friday the White House rejected the UK’s criticism. “President Trump is absolutely right – the United States of America has done more for Nato than any other country in the alliance has done combined,” said spokesperson Taylor Rogers.
