Trump commitment to peace in Ukraine sincere, Starmer says, but minerals deal not enough to provide US security guarantee – live

Prime minister says UK must strengthen relationship with US for security

As Jakub Krupa and Martin Belam report on our Europe live blog, Emmanuel Macron, the French president, is floating proposals for a month-long ceasefire in Ukraine covering air, sea and attacks on critical infrastructure.

In interviews this morning, Luke Pollard, the defence minister, played down reports that this is a plan that Britain is formally backing. Asked about French government claims to this effect, he replied:

No agreement has been made on what a truce looks like, and so I don’t recognise the precise part you mentioned there. But we are working together with France and our European allies to look at what is the path to how … we create a lasting and durable peace in Ukraine.

You wouldn’t expect me to get into the details of what that plan looks like, because at the moment, the only person that would benefit from those details being put in the public domain before any plan is agreed would be President Putin.

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Europe has a lot to do before it can exert real influence on a Ukraine peace deal

The continent’s role in any ceasefire will be limited unless countries commit more to Kiev and the Zelenskyy-Trump relationship is repaired

Europe and the UK are hoping they are on the brink of assembling a credible military coalition that Donald Trump can only refuse to support at risk of appearing openly to ally with Vladimir Putin – an alliance many grassroots Republicans reject.

The plan is a long shot since it requires enough countries inside Nato to offer practical support to such a coalition of the willing, and also needs Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, to patch up his relations with Donald Trump following Friday’s Oval Office meeting.

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UK and France will work on own Ukraine peace plan, says Keir Starmer

PM says he and Macron have agreed to begin talks as Europe scrambles to respond to White House disaster

Britain and France will work on their own peace plan for Ukraine, Keir Starmer has said, as European leaders scrambled to respond to Friday’s disastrous White House meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The prime minister told the BBC on Sunday that he and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had agreed to begin negotiations separate to those between the US and Russia, after a series of hurried phone calls on Saturday evening.

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Starmer hosts Zelenskyy for ‘meaningful and warm’ talks

Ukraine leader embraced in No 10 and given £2.26bn defence loan one day after his White House dressing down

Keir Starmer has described his meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “meaningful and warm”, according to Downing Street.

The British prime minister met the Ukrainian president on Saturday evening, just 24 hours after Zelenskyy’s meeting with the US president, Donald Trump, and vice-president, JD Vance, in Washington.

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Labour must target deprived areas or lose out to Reform, says former minister

Peer argues that national ‘trickledown’ approach will fail to benefit those in most need

Keir Starmer’s government must strictly target the delivery of its core “missions” at areas of maximum deprivation or lose huge numbers of votes to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, an independent commission led by a former Labour cabinet minister will suggest this week.

The Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON), chaired by Labour peer Hilary Armstrong, a former party chief whip and housing minister, will say the government risks “wasting billions of pounds in higher public spending while failing to transform the places that need it most” unless it adopts the targeted approach.

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After the Trump-Zelenskyy spat, Starmer may not have many cards left to play on Ukraine

As he attempts to repair relations, the prime minister is being forced closer to a choice between the US and Europe

As Keir Starmer surveys the wreckage of the US-Ukrainian relationship caused by the Oval Office bar-room fight, the UK prime minister is clearly intent on trying to repair the diplomatic damage, but it may be that the mood of mutual antagonism not just in the US, but in Europe, is too great.

It is not as if Starmer, to use Trump’s blunt phraseology, has many cards left to play. He had already played them, and his hand was not strong enough to prevent the US-Ukraine breakdown.

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Starmer may have weaponised the Windsors, but soft power is the royals’ great asset

Just as in the Oval Office this week, history shows the royals can be deployed to serve British interests – whether they like it or not

As Donald Trump waved his personal invitation from King Charles III to pay a second historic state visit in the Oval Office, there was no disguising his delight before the TV cameras.

Keir Starmer had retrieved the letter from his jacket pocket and handed it to the US president with the dramatic flourish of Neville Chamberlain’s “I have in my hand a piece of paper” moment.

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‘Rather fraught’: how Starmer’s team laid groundwork for positive Trump talks

President’s warmth towards PM was apparent – but will No 10’s strategy prove successful longer-term?

“We’re feeling good, we’re very well prepared,” one senior UK official declared on the eve of Keir Starmer’s highly anticipated first meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. The prime minister had just landed in Washington DC and been driven straight to a glitzy reception at the UK ambassador’s opulent Edwin Lutyens-designed residence.

Under the sparkling crystal chandeliers and among the grand marble columns, his euphoric host, Peter Mandelson, introduced Starmer to guests including the new FBI director, Kush Patel. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham and the New York-based editor Tina Brown were also present.

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Anneliese Dodds resigns over Keir Starmer’s decision to cut aid budget

Exclusive: International development minister warns it will be ‘impossible’ to retain funding in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine

Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, has quit her post over Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the international aid budget by almost half to pay for an increase in defence spending, warning it could enable Russia and China to further their global influence.

The senior Labour MP, who attended cabinet, predicted that the UK pulling back from development would bolster Moscow, which has already been aggressively increasing its presence worldwide, as well as encourage Beijing’s attempts to rewrite global rules.

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Cuts to UK vaccine funding could lead to ‘huge numbers’ of child deaths overseas

Exclusive: Hundreds of thousands of world’s poorest children could die if aid programme slashed, experts warn

Hundreds of thousands of children in the world’s poorest countries will die if the UK cuts back funding for a hugely effective vaccination programme as part of its significant reduction in overseas aid, the Guardian has been told.

According to data collated by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi), to which the UK has previously been one of the main contributors, even a small cut in UK funding would be expected to result in millions fewer vaccinations, leading to huge numbers of preventable deaths.

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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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Trump says Putin would keep his word on a Ukraine peace deal

President claims presence of US workers in Ukraine would deter Russian aggression after talks with Keir Starmer

Donald Trump has insisted that Vladimir Putin would “keep his word” on a peace deal for Ukraine, arguing that US workers extracting critical minerals in the country would act as a security backstop to deter Russia from invading again.

During highly anticipated talks at the White House with the prime minister, Keir Starmer, the US president said that Putin could be trusted not to breach any agreement, which could aim to return as much of the land as possible to Ukraine that was seized by Russia during the brutal three-year conflict.

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Donald Trump suggests he will back UK in Chagos Islands deal

‘I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country,’ president says of plan to hand sovereignty to Mauritius

Donald Trump has strongly hinted that he will back a deal in which the UK hands sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, including the Diego Garcia military base, which is jointly used by the US.

“I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country,” the US president told reporters during an impromptu press conference in the Oval Office with Keir Starmer, who is visiting Washington. He added: “I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well.”

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Top Democrat says Trump may seek mineral deal with both Russia and Ukraine

Jeanne Shaheen discusses Trump’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to rare-earth reserves for helping end war

Donald Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a top Senate Democrat has warned, discussing the US president’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to 50% of its rare-earth reserves, as a price for helping end the war three years after Russia invaded.

I think anything that helps position Ukraine for any peace negotiations is a positive move,” said Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations and armed services committee, who recently visited 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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What will Keir Starmer try to achieve during talks with Donald Trump?

British prime minister heads to Washington as Europe reels from seismic shift in relations with US president

Keir Starmer heads to Washington on Wednesday for a visit that will be brief but watched intensely not just in the UK but in many other European capitals – particularly Kyiv. What will the prime minister hope to get from his talks with Donald Trump on Thursday? And just as importantly, how can he get the US president to listen? These will be the main issues.

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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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Trump has changed Ukraine debate ‘for the better’, says Downing Street

Starmer’s spokesperson says US intervention ‘could bring lasting peace’ as No 10 treads carefully before White House visit

Donald Trump has changed the global conversation around Ukraine “for the better”, Downing Street has said, as the UK imposed further sanctions on Russia in an effort to force Vladimir Putin to make concessions.

As world leaders marked the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said the US president had opened the door to talks that could bring lasting peace.

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