22nd Feb 2025 10:35
(Alliance News) - Keir Starmer is expected to confirm a timeline to raise defence spending and give Donald Trump an invitation for a state visit when he visits Washington next week, according to a report.
The UK prime minister will have to walk a tricky line when he meets Trump, balancing the UK's support for Ukraine with the need to keep the US onside.
The US president has started negotiations with Russia on ending the conflict, but excluded Kyiv from the talks – and a deepening rift has emerged between him and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as the two have traded barbs.
Washington has also put pressure on the UK and its allies to do more to shoulder the burden of European defence.
In an effort to ease tensions, Starmer is expected during the trip to finally set a date, likely 2030, for the UK to reach its goal of spending 2.5% of GDP, The Telegraph reported. This is up from the current 2.3%.
The prime minister will also deliver an invitation from the King for a state visit to the UK, according to the newspaper.
The US president is known to admire the royal family.
Starmer's trip to Washington will come after Ukraine marks three years since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022. A defence announcement is expected to mark the occasion.
It will also come after a visit to Washington by Emmanuel Macron.
Trump said Starmer and the French president "haven't done anything" to end the war in Ukraine in the last three years.
"They didn't do anything either (to end the war). The war's going on, no meetings with Russia, no nothing.
"They haven't done anything. Macron is a friend of mine, and I've met with the prime minister and he's a very nice guy (but) nobody's done anything," he told a Fox News podcast released Friday.
Macron has said he intends to tell his American counterpart not to "be weak" in the face of Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Starmer is also facing pressure to take a firm line when he meets Trump.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey accused Trump of plotting a "stitch-up" with Putin that "amounts to a betrayal of Ukraine", and urged the prime minister to speak "honestly and openly" with him.
Davey added: "I think we're all astonished and deeply alarmed, and if the British Prime Minister doesn't reflect that, he's not reflecting the views of the British people."
But senior Cabinet minister Pat McFadden stressed the importance of maintaining a "good and constructive relationship" with the White House.
"I think the UK is potentially in a good position with this administration, if we handle it correctly.
"Handling it correctly doesn't mean following every twist and turn of every comment, but is focusing on what will actually happen as well as what was said," he said at a fringe event at the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow on Friday.
The growing rift between Trump and Zelensky presents a challenge for the prime minister.
The US leader described Zelensky as a "dictator".
The Ukrainian president then claimed Trump was living in a Russian "disinformation space", which led White House officials to accuse Zelensky of "insulting" his counterpart.
The Americans also cancelled a planned joint press conference in Kyiv, in a sign of a deepening feud between the two countries.
Businessman Elon Musk, who is acting as an adviser on federal spending to Trump, meanwhile suggested Zelensky is running a "fraud machine feeding off the dead bodies of soldiers", suggesting limited appetite for continued American support for Ukraine.
However, Trump's Ukraine envoy, retired general Keith Kellogg, praised Zelensky on Friday as an "embattled and courageous leader of a nation at war" following what he described as "extensive and positive discussions" between the two men.
Macron said he would tell Trump: "It's not you, it's not your trademark, it's not in your interest.
"How can you then be credible in the face of China if you're weak in the face of Putin?"
Poland's president Andrzej Duda is set to meet Trump on Saturday, Polish news agency PAP reported.
Duda said he had a "candid" conversation with Zelensky on Friday and urged him to "remain committed to the course of calm and constructive co-operation" with Trump.
"I trust that good will and honesty form the foundation of the US negotiation strategy," he posted on X.
By Helen Corbett, Christopher McKeon and David Lynch, PA Political Staff
Press Association: News
source: PA
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