UK’s influence contributed to Trump’s Greenland U-turn, Cooper suggests – UK politics live

Foreign secretary cites ‘strength of connections’ and ‘determined diplomacy’ in president’s change of stance

Keir Starmer has welcomed Donald Trump’s decision to drop his threat to impose tariffs on the UK and some other Nato countries that opposed his plan to buy Greenland, saying “British pragmatism” helped to resolve the crisis.

In his first public remarks since Trump’s climbdown last night, Starmer also said he hoped that the US and its allies would now focus on the “hard yards” of guaranteeing security in the Arctic.

I think you will have noticed that the last few days have been incredibly serious in relation to big things happening on the world stage.

And you may have seen but it is a good thing that yesterday the threat of tariffs against the United Kingdom was lifted, and now we can start hard yards and finding a way forward on security in the Arctic, which may seem a long way away, pretty remote, but actually it does matter to all of us in terms of the safety and security of our country.

Cooper, the foreign secretary, suggested that Trump’s shift was in part related to the “strength” of Britain’s influence in Washington. Asked about this climbdown, she told Sky News:

I think it’s a reflection of the strength of our connections in Washington that we’ve obviously had a very significant shift in the president’s position over the last two weeks, the fact that we’ve been doing very determined diplomacy, not just directly the prime minister talking to the president, but also talking at every level.

I’ve spoken to secretary of state [Marco] Rubio, we’ve also spoken to many people across not just the US administration, but also Congress as well, and we have done so with our allies.

If we stipulate that we just witnessed a modest climbdown from Trump on Greenland (no mention of tariffs, ruling out force), what should we credit?

– EU resolve on tariffs/ACI/tripwire force?

Cooper said that the UK had told the Americans “how damaging” Trump’s stance had been to US-European relations. She told Sky News:

I think it’s been us being very clear to US colleagues across the board that we are not going to move on those principles, alongside us putting forward very practical arguments about how damaging all of this has been.

Cooper would not say whether or not she had seen the text of the deal agreed yesterday between Trump and Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, about Greenland.

She told BBC Breakfast that she was not aware of mineral rights being part of those discussions.

She said she hoped countries could now focus on an “Arctic sentry” as a collective security framework. She said:

I think this [deal] is about both two things. First of all, some direct discussions between the US and Denmark and Greenland as well – and secondly, about something that I’ve been calling for, that the UK has been calling for, which is a sort of Arctic sentry, which is very similar to the approach that Nato has taken to the Baltic sentry, to the eastern sentry, where countries work together through Nato.

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Source: www.theguardian.com

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