Pat McFadden admits Keir Starmer ‘doesn’t always agree’ with Donald Trump after PM phone call

Sir Keir held a late-night phone call with the US President on Wednesday, with the pair discussing Greenland and yesterday’s seizure of the Russian-flagged oil tanker Marinera.

However, in a joint statement on Tuesday, the leaders of the UK, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Poland said: “Greenland belongs to its people.

“It is for Denmark and Greenland, and them only, to decide on matters concerning Denmark and Greenland.”

Asked by GB News host Stephen Dixon if Sir Keir is “stuck between a rock and hard place” on his relationship with Mr Trump, Mr McFadden said: “No, I just think this is the world that we’re living in. It’s a more unpredictable world.

“President Trump is who he is, and the task for every country, including us, is to respond to that world.”

He added: “At the heart of that is still a really important relationship between the UK and United States, and it’s one that keeps your viewers safe every day in the defence and intelligence sphere, it’s a really important economic relationship too.

“So I think it is possible to say that, to really value this relationship, it won’t always mean that you agree with every single comment, or indeed, you have to respond to every single comment.”

|

REUTERS / GB NEWS

Making clear that Sir Keir must demonstrate both “soft power and hard power” on the world’s stage, Mr McFadden told GB News: “This is the world we’ve been in for the past year, and I think we have to get used to it. I think we have to understand why it’s changed.

“And critically, I think we have to understand that in this world, you have to be able to exercise both hard power and soft power.”

Praising the Prime Minister for taking the lead in rallying European support for Ukraine, the Pensions Secretary added: “That’s why it’s right that the UK has stepped up by increasing our own defence expenditure and trying to play a leading role in organising European countries in support of the defence of Ukraine.

“This is the big picture of what’s been happening over the past year.”

| PA

Asked by host Ellie Costello on the UK’s “special relationship” with the US and whether Sir Keir still considers Mr Trump a “reliable ally”, he agreed.

Mr McFadden said: “Yeah, I think they are a reliable ally. It’s a very good relationship, I’ve seen it in my time in Government how important it is.

“You mentioned the example yesterday, this operation was carried out in part by United States assets which had been temporarily located in the UK. It’s done with UK support, UK military assets also playing their part.

“So yes, the United States is a reliable ally. It’s an important ally, and that relationship between the UK and the US is really, really important and valuable and in the UK’s national interest, I might add.”

Turning the discussion to domestic issues affecting Britons, Mr McFadden was grilled on Labour’s decision to lift the two-child benefit cap.

Defending the legislation, Mr McFadden said: “This is really important legislation today, it will lift 450,000 children out of poverty over the next few years.

“And it’s not just a matter of cash distribution, this is an investment in children’s future, because children who grow up in poverty are less likely to do well at school. They’re more likely to develop mental health problems, which I can tell you as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is an increasing human and financial cost to the nation.

“So by doing this, we are trying to change these children’s lives as well as engaging in a cash distribution. So it’s a really important piece of legislation.”

|

GB NEWS

He added: “And the challenge will be for our opponents at the next election. Are they going to fight the next election, pledged to reverse this and put more children back into poverty or not? The ball is now in their court. They’re going to have to make that choice.”

Pushing back on the Pension Secretary’s remarks, Ellie said: “Nobody wants to see children living in poverty, of course they don’t, but lifting the two-child benefit cap does not incentivise parents to go out to work.

“And surely the way to sustainably lift children and families out of poverty is to have a good, stable income, to have good employment, and the unemployment rate under your Government has soared to 5.1 per cent. It hasn’t been that high since the pandemic, since 2020. These parents need good jobs and good, stable incomes for their children.”

Mr McFadden told GB News: “Well, 60 per cent of the children who are affected by this child poverty are in families where someone works, and we’re trying to make work pay by increasing the minimum wage, by extending help for childcare, for working parents.

“And another important part of this is that half the children who will benefit from this are in households where the parents weren’t on Universal Credit when they had the children, and that’s because lives can change. Someone can lose their job, a marriage can break up, a spouse can die, all sorts of circumstances can change. So it’s not a static group of people who are just on benefits forever, this is a group of people where people are moving in and out of work all the time.”