Starmer to hold talks with Zelenskyy and Meloni before Ukraine defence summit

Prime minister will host more than a dozen countries over weekend as Europe tries to secure deal to end war

Keir Starmer will hold talks with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni in Downing Street on Sunday before a major London defence summit aimed at securing “lasting and enforced” peace in Ukraine.

Fresh from his trip to see Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday, Starmer has headed back to London to host the defence summit, where more than a dozen world leaders will gather to discuss Ukraine.

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Russia could reinvade Ukraine without US security guarantees, Starmer warns

UK prime minister faces major diplomatic effort to get president on board after he said no plans for US ‘backstop’

Keir Starmer has warned that Vladimir Putin could invade Ukraine again unless the US provides security guarantees as he arrived for critical talks with Donald Trump at the most precarious moment for European stability in decades.

With the future of Ukrainian security hanging in the balance, he urged the president to commit a US backstop to a British and French-led peacekeeping force, saying it was the only way to avoid Russia plunging Europe back into war.

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Badenoch challenges Starmer over defence spending and Chagos deal ahead of his Trump meeting – UK politics live

PM fields questions on his announcement that the UK will raise defence spending and cut the foreign aid budget

PMQs is about to start.

Here is the list of MPs down to ask a question.

The threat from the far right is real, but that leaves me all the more convinced that working together is not only the right choice, but the only choice …

More unites us than divides us. Now is the moment to make that real by uniting behind shared values, shared standards of behaviour and shared political norms, and unite against the rise of the far right.

I want us to work together to agree a common approach to asserting the values of our country, to bringing people together and creating a cohesive society where everyone feels at home …

It is time to come together, to draw a line in the sand, to set out who we are and what we believe in, because a politics of fear is a politics of despair …

I want to work with other political parties to set out clearly and boldly to the public what we can agree on as the norms and the values of our society and how we can protect those because I think they are under threat, I think they’re under very, very vigorous threat, from the politics of Farage.

Farage has been for years leading the argument which has been hostile to migration. And I think it’s based on a fundamentally racist view of the world. I reject that. I think migration is an advantage for Scotland.

There is a very live and active threat to our security from the aggression of Russia, and I think Farage is an accomplice to the Russian agenda and an apologist for the Russian agenda.

So to anybody in this country who thinks that Farage represents a means of protecting this country from the external threats that we face, I would say, have a good close look at what Farage has been connected with and what his MPs are saying about the Russian threat and their trivialisation of the Russian threat.

I’m simply making the point today that it’s important that those of us who are repulsed by the politics of Farage and the far right come together to … stress the importance of the values that we hold dear.

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Starmer can only hope slashing aid to boost defence wins Trump’s favour

PM’s Washington trip clear impetus for abrupt news of budget switch to meet defence commitment by 2027

Before Keir Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday, the prime minister thought it necessary to offer the president a gift. Britain’s defence spending will increase by 0.17 percentage points to 2.5% of GDP by April 2027, he told MPs in a hastily arranged Commons statement. The money, he added, would be taken directly from the overseas aid budget, whose level will be cut by nearly half to 0.3%.

The last measure is a remarkable turn for a Labour government. Uncomfortably, it comes at a time when Donald Trump wants to shut down perhaps the entire $40bn US aid budget – and at a stroke eliminates a signature commitment from the Blair-Brown years. It was back in 2004, when Tony Blair was prime minister, that Labour first committed to increasing aid spending to 0.7% of GDP.

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Starmer slashes aid to fund major increase in defence spending

Announcement prompts concerns that PM is pandering to US president and warnings over consequences of aid cuts

Keir Starmer has announced that Britain will “fight for peace in Europe” with a generational increase in defence spending paid for by slashing the foreign aid budget.

The move, just two days before the prime minister is due to meet Donald Trump, raised immediate concerns that he was pandering to the US president, and fury from aid groups that say it could cost lives in countries that rely on UK support.

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Starmer unlikely to unveil plan for rise in defence spending this week, says minister

Bridget Phillipson calls 2.5% target ‘ambitious’ days before PM meets with Donald Trump in Washington

Keir Starmer is unlikely to set out a plan this week for when the UK will increase its defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, a cabinet minister has indicated.

The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, said the target was ambitious, despite Labour previously claiming it would set out a path to meeting the spending goal after the strategic defence review in the spring.

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Record orders at BAE Systems as European defence spending rises

Weapons maker’s full-year pre-tax profits top £3bn and it expects sales of more than £30bn next year

Britain’s biggest weapons manufacturer, BAE Systems, has reported record orders as the European defence industry gears up for increased spending sparked by the Ukraine war.

The company, a member of the FTSE 100, said it expected sales next year to top £30bn, as it reported annual profits before interest and tax of more than £3bn for the first time in 2024.

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Campaigners urge F-35 fighter jet producing nations to stop supplying Israel

Exclusive: More than 200 civil society groups say governments have failed to prevent planes from being used to violate international law

More than 200 organisations worldwide have called on nations involved in producing F-35 fighter jets to “immediately halt all arms transfers to Israel” amid fears they have failed to prevent the planes from being used to violate international law.

The letter, signed by 232 civil society organisations, was sent on Monday to government ministers in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the US and the UK as the war in Gaza reached 500 days.

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PM does not rule out vote on Ukraine peacekeeping role for UK troops

Spokesperson says Keir Starmer’s previously stated view that military action needs consent of MPs has not changed

Keir Starmer has not ruled out holding a parliamentary vote on committing UK troops to a peacekeeping role in Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, after calls from some within Labour and the Lib Dems.

Downing Street hinted that a US-backed guarantee would be needed in order for the UK to send ground troops, saying it was an “essential” part of any ceasefire deal with Russia.

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UK hopes to be a bridge between Europe and Trump’s US, minister says

Jonathan Reynolds says Britain has not given up on persuading the US to allow Ukraine to join Nato

The UK hopes to act as a bridge between Europe and Donald Trump’s US, the business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, has said before what could be a crucial week of diplomacy in deciding Ukraine’s future.

With Keir Starmer expected to travel to Paris on Monday for an emergency summit of European leaders, in advance of a possible trip to Washington the following week, Reynolds said the UK had still not given up on persuading the US to allow Ukraine to join Nato.

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Pete Hegseth says ‘everything is on the table’ to end Ukraine war

US defence secretary suggests cutting number of American troops in Europe could even be part of a deal with Russia

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has said “everything is on the table” to bring peace to Ukraine and suggested reducing the number of American troops in Europe could be part of any deal.

European leaders are reeling from several abrupt US moves since Wednesday in relation to the Ukraine war and the continent’s security, which has been underpinned by the US since Nato was formed at the end of the second world war.

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Fishing rights will not derail EU-UK security pact, says European Council president

With member states keen to link quotas to any deal, António Costa says defence and fisheries ‘are different things’

The EU will not let the question of fishing rights derail a pact with the UK on security and defence, the president of the European Council has said.

The comments from António Costa, who took over as the European Council president in December, is a boost for Keir Starmer, amid frustration among UK officials over EU insistence on linking a security deal to other demands, notably fishing rights.

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Starmer calls on European leaders to put more economic pressure on Russia

PM wants to ‘see all allies stepping up’, saying Donald Trump’s threat of sanctions has rattled Vladimir Putin

Keir Starmer has called on European leaders to put more economic pressure on Russia, saying Donald Trump’s threat of sanctions has left Vladimir Putin “rattled”.

Before a meeting in Brussels on Monday, the prime minister said it was necessary to “see all allies stepping up – particularly in Europe” when it comes to inflicting economic harm on Russia, and argued it would help bring about peace by ending the Ukraine war sooner.

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Judicial review must be heard on how UK can sell F-35 parts to Israel, judge rules

Hearing likely in May, seven months after government decided to carve out jet parts from arms export ban

A high court judge has ruled a judicial review must be quickly heard on government claims that national security entitles ministers to sell parts for F-35 jets to Israel even though Britain accepts that there is a risk they will be used in breach of international humanitarian law.

The hearing will most likely take place in May – nearly seven months after the Labour government made the contentious decision to carve out F-35 parts from the ban on arms exports to Israel.

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Keir Starmer did not discuss threat of US tariffs on UK imports in first call with Donald Trump, No 10 says – UK politics live

Downing Street says PM’s call with Trump was ‘warm’ and did not include tariffs, Greenland, defence-spending or Ukraine

The hearing has stopped for a short break. Heather Hallett, the chair, tells Badenoch that her evidence will be finished by lunchtime.

Keith is now asking Badenoch about the fourth report produced by the Race Disparity Unit. It was produced in December 2021.

Relevant health departments and agencies should review and action existing requests for health data, and undertake an independent strategic review of the dissemination of healthcare data and the publication of statistics and analysis.​​

Government is not necessarily great at delivering these systems. They tend to be big boondoggles for the private sector, but there are private sector companies that can deliver this. There need to be caveats around that.

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Calls for Ireland to boost defence of subsea internet cables

Some say recent suspected sabotage of transatlantic cables serving Europe and UK means Ireland must be able to defend itself

They are the bedrock of the internet, keeping everything from TikTok to emergency services, business, banking systems and political and military communications running smoothly.

But deep under the sea, the network of cables around British and Irish shores are being considered as increasingly attractive targets for military, terrorist or criminal actors after several incidents in the Baltics where internet cables were severed and internet communications were disrupted.

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Britain’s response to Russian ‘spy ship’ is game of political messaging – for now

Deteriorating security environment and incidents in Baltic have forced military reassessment in northern Europe

Submarines normally operate in secret, lurking in the deep. So when the British defence secretary, John Healey, authorised a Royal Navy Astute-class attack sub to surface close to the Russian “spy ship” Yantar south of Cornwall in November, it was unusual enough.

What was even more notable, however, was that the minister went on to tell the House of Commons on Wednesday what he had done. It was, Healey said, conducted “strictly as a deterrent measure”, as was his decision to accuse the Kremlin of spying on the location of undersea communication and utility cables that connect Britain to the world.

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Robots, drones and uncrewed vessels ‘likely to be default’ in future Royal Navy

UK defence chiefs see no need to recruit extra sailors as maritime force will become hybrid with uncrewed systems

The Royal Navy of the future will be dominated by robots, drones and uncrewed vessels, leading chiefs to conclude there is no need to try to recruit extra sailors as part of the forthcoming defence review.

Adm Sir Ben Key, the first sea lord, believes the navy has to focus on recruitment and retention rather than seeking more personnel numbers because crew sizes are inevitably falling as military technology evolves.

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‘Flat packing them’: soldier says SAS described killing Afghans in casual way

Inquiry hears elite forces had a ‘kill all males on target whether they posed a threat or not’ policy in Afghanistan

Afghans who were killed by members of the SAS in Afghanistan were described dismissively as having been “flat packed” according to revealing testimony given by a former member of the elite force’s sister unit to a public inquiry.

The soldier, known only as N1799, said he had been party to a conversation with a member of the SAS in 2011 who had served in Afghanistan, in which he had been “shocked by the age and methods” used to kill Afghans.

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British army could be wiped out within six months of Ukraine-scale war, minister warns

Alistair Carns says a casualty rate similar to Russia’s invasion could lead to the army being ‘expended’ within six to 12 months

The British army would be wiped out in as little as six months if it was forced to fight a war on the scale of the Ukraine conflict, a defence minister has warned.

Alistair Carns said a rate of casualties similar to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would lead to the army being “expended” within six to 12 months.

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