\n<\/p>\n
With bear traps avoided and fireworks unlit, Keir Starmer will be delighted that his press conference with Donald Trump lent credence to his claim to be America\u2019s first partner in defence, trade and now technology.<\/p>\n
Trump, for his part, got the \u201cgreat pictures\u201d he wanted and was on his best low-wattage behaviour. He said he did not disagree with his host about much, save Starmer\u2019s plan to recognise a Palestinian state. And he teetered on the edge of being diplomatic, at least until he advised Starmer to use the military to stop small boats crossing the Channel.<\/p>\n
But the hour the two men spent away from the cameras will be the true test of whether Starmer was able to use this second state visit, with all its pomp, to change any of the US president\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n
Starmer \u2013 whose technique in public is to alight on whatever small patch of common ground he can find with Trump \u2013 will have used that precious private time to try to persuade him to think again about the trustworthiness of Vladimir Putin and the judgment of Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
<\/span>‘Putin has let me down’: key takeaways from Trump and Starmer’s press conference \u2013 video<\/span><\/p>\n On Gaza, judging by the press conference, Starmer failed. Trump nodded when he was told by an ITV reporter that he was \u201cthe only man on the planet capable of stopping the demolition of Gaza City, to stop the starvation of Palestine and stop the killing of civilians\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump replied that he could not forget 7 October, and said his demand was for Hamas to hand over all the hostages in one go.<\/p>\n Starmer and Trump are not that far apart, however, since the entire Arab world now backs plans for a government for Gaza in which Hamas plays no role. That will be underscored again at a UN conference next week.<\/p>\n Trump is also privately supportive of the joint plan from Jared Kushner and Tony Blair for Gaza\u2019s reconstruction, in which Palestinians would not be displaced from the territory. Displacement, with its echoes of the Nakba of 1948, would make it a non-starter with Gulf states, and in any case would run counter to the ideas generated by Egypt, France and the UK.<\/p>\n Starmer\u2019s difficulty lies in persuading Trump to weigh in behind specific plans in public, and convincing him that Gulf states will start to make their own plans for future security if he appears to subcontract his Middle East policy to Netanyahu.<\/p>\n On Ukraine there may have been something closer to a meeting of minds. Trump, sounding hurt, said he felt really let down by Putin, and acknowledged that the war had been more difficult to solve than he forecast.<\/p>\n Starmer held back from saying Trump\u2019s optimism had been misplaced. But he said Putin\u2019s latest targets showed a new \u201crecklessness\u201d that demanded a stronger response.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Get the day\u2019s headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to put extra pressure on Putin,\u201d Starmer said. \u201cIt\u2019s only when the president has put pressure on Putin that he\u2019s actually shown any inclination to move.\u201d<\/p>\n Cornered about whether he was willing to apply this pressure, Trump said: \u201cI\u2019m willing to do other things,\u201d adding: \u201cBut not when the people that I\u2019m fighting for are buying oil from Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n Given the levels of ignorance Trump harbours, it is always possible he only learned recently that some members of the European Union \u2013 in particular his close allies Slovakia and Hungary \u2013 continue to import Russian oil, but it has provided him with a convenient excuse not to impose the tariffs he promised on China for importing Russian oil.<\/p>\n The one thing Starmer cannot afford is for Trump to walk away from the Ukraine crisis. So he and Europe now have little choice but to move faster on closing down the flow of oil to Europe. The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has already promised to speed up its plan to stop buying Russian oil and gas, moving the deadline earlier than 2028.<\/p>\n Starmer has something to work with in that Trump agreed that the lower the price of oil, the quicker Putin would settle.<\/p>\n After the past two days, King Charles and Starmer can only hope Trump is closer to being convinced that if he stops talking about sanctions, and instead implements them, he can persuade Putin that his options are finally closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With bear traps avoided and fireworks unlit, Keir Starmer will be delighted that his press conference with Donald Trump lent credence to his claim to be America\u2019s first partner in defence, trade and now technology. Trump, for his part, got the \u201cgreat pictures\u201d he wanted and was on his best low-wattage behaviour. He said he<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22313,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[10807,4528,1442,964,1347,13690,5224,13691,81,71],"class_list":{"0":"post-22312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-avoided","9":"tag-bear","10":"tag-changed","11":"tag-donald","12":"tag-starmer","13":"tag-statevisit","14":"tag-thinking","15":"tag-traps","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-trumps"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/22313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}