Prime minister says conversation with US president on Thursday night focused on need for ‘practical plan’ to open strait of Hormuz
Keir Starmer has recorded a short pooled TV interview in Qatar this morning. It did not really add much to what we have heard him say before but, for the record, here are the main lines.
Starmer implied that he declined the opportunity to tell Donald Trump in person how “fed up” he is about the president’s impact on UK energy bills (see 9.01am) when they spoke last night. He said their focus in the call was on the need for a “practical plan” to open the strait of Hormuz. He also said he had told the president that leaders of the Gulf countries stressed to him that, if the ceasefire is to hold, they should be involved in the plan for the region’s future. Starmer was being interviewed by Robert Peston, who conducted the interview yesterday in which the PM said he was “fed up” with energy prices going up in the UK because of wars started by Trump and Vladimir Putin. Peston asked if Starmer raised this in his call with Trump, but the PM did not address that point and said they spent “most of the time on the call talking about the practical plan”. (He did not say what that practical plan was.)
Starmer said there among the Gulf states there is “a very strong sense there can’t be tolling or restrictions” on the stait of Hormuz as part of the final settlement.
He said the “overarching impression” from his tour was how much value Gulf countries placed on having the UK as an ally. He said:
The overarching impression here is the importance, as they see it, of us standing with them as an ally, as a friend of theirs at a point of need.
And there’s been reflection on the work that we’ve done with them over the last six to seven weeks, on collective self-defence.
He restated his belief that European members of Nato need to spend more on defence. He made this point when asked about Trump’s threats to withdraw from Nato. Asked if raised these threats in the call, Starmer did not answer directly, but said he was continually saying that Europe needed to do more for Nato.
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