Fix your country, Trump tells Starmer

Donald Trump told Sir Keir Starmer to straighten out the UK as the rift between the two leaders over Greenland and the Chagos Islands deal deepened.

The US president suggested on Tuesday night that Sir Keir and France’s Emmanuel Macron were two-faced. Mr Trump said: “[They] treat me well. They get a little bit rough when … I’m not around, but when I’m around, they treat me very nicely.”

Mr Trump said he would snub an emergency meeting of the G7 that Mr Macron had proposed could take place in Paris. The US president suggested his French counterpart would not be around “much longer”.

“Emmanuel is not going to be there very long. And you know, there’s no longevity there. He’s a friend of mine. He’s a nice guy. I like Macron, but, but he’s not, he’s not going to be there very much longer,” he said.

Mr Trump was due to depart for the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday night, but his plane was forced to turn around mid-air because of a “minor electrical issue”. Mr Trump and his entourage will switch to another plane and continue the trip to Davos.

The incident took place hours after the US president renewed his threat to take Greenland and criticised Sir Keir’s Chagos deal as “an act of stupidity”.

The US president said “London is having a lot of problems”, when asked how he would characterise his relationship with the Prime Minister.

“They’ve [Starmer and Macron] got to straighten out their countries. London is having a lot of problems,” the US president told reporters.

Earlier on Tuesday, European leaders hit back at Mr Trump, warning against bullying on the world stage and calling for appeasement of the US president to end.

Emmanuel Macron led the response after Mr Trump published a private text message (below) from the French president, renewed his promise to annex Greenland and attacked Sir Keir’s deal to give away the Chagos Islands.

Writing on his Truth Social platform, Mr Trump said of the Diego Garcia military base on the islands: “Shockingly, our “brilliant” NATO Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital U.S. Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER.”

In a thinly veiled swipe at Mr Trump at Davos, Mr Macron later said: “We do prefer respect to bullies. And we do prefer rule of law to brutality.”

The French president, one of the driving forces behind Europe’s push to be strategically independent of Washington, warned that “imperial ambitions” were resurfacing among major powers.

After Mr Macron’s speech, Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, suggested Europe must take a harder line with Mr Trump.

“Europe cannot afford to be weak, neither against its enemies, nor ally. Appeasement means no results, only humiliation. European assertiveness and self-confidence have become the need of the moment,” he said.

Despite the rhetoric, however, Europe appeared divided and without a concrete plan ahead of Mr Trump’s expected arrival at the Swiss summit on Wednesday, where he is due to hold talks with the head of Nato.

Mr Trump insists the US must own the mineral-rich island of Greenland to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic.

“I agreed to a meeting of the various parties in Davos, Switzerland. As I expressed to everyone, very plainly, Greenland is imperative for national and world security,” Mr Trump wrote on social media on Tuesday. “There can be no going back – on that, everyone agrees!”

Sir Keir said Britain was prepared to “play its part to protect Arctic security alongside Nato” in a call with the president of the European Council, Downing Street said.

A No 10 spokesman said: “The Prime Minister spoke to the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa, this evening.

“Discussing events of recent days, he reiterated his position that the future of Greenland belongs to the people of Greenland and the Kingdom of Denmark alone.

“He reiterated that the UK is prepared to play its part to protect Arctic security, alongside Nato.

“They agreed on the fundamental importance of continued defence and security co-operation in these volatile times.”

Danish officials were invited to the World Economic Forum but will not attend amid the intense focus on Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of their kingdom.

On Tuesday, Greenland’s prime minister ordered the population to start preparing for a possible American military invasion.

Jens-Frederik Nielsen stressed that while such a scenario was unlikely, “it can’t be ruled out”.

He said the authorities would form a task force dedicated to preparing for any disruptions to daily life, and would issue new guidelines, such as ensuring residents have enough food to last five days.

On Tuesday afternoon at Nuuk airport, Vivian Motzfeldt, Greenland’s foreign minister, received a hero’s welcome as she returned from a visit to the United States. Crowds of Greenlanders gathered with the territory’s red and white flag as they waited for Ms Motzfeldt.

At Davos, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, used her speech to warn of “a necessity to build a new form of European independence” as the transatlantic rift widened.

While not seeking to directly antagonise Mr Trump, Mrs von der Leyen unveiled a five-point European plan to secure Greenland’s future.

She said it would involve using the bloc’s planned €800bn (£697bn) rearmament scheme to boost security in the Arctic.

The plans include investment in Greenland’s economy and the production of a “European icebreaker capability”. Such a ship, which is capable of cutting through solid Arctic ice, would put European navies at an advantage, because the US does not produce its own and is reliant on purchases from Finland.

On the fringes of the Davos gathering, Bart De Wever, Belgium’s prime minister, said Europe was approaching “breaking point” in its relations with Washington because of the row over Greenland.

He also compared Mr Trump to the Very Hungry Caterpillar for his greed. Mr De Wever said: “My feeling is that the sweet-talking is over ... You reach the point where sweet-talking and sweet-talking is counterproductive.

“It only encourages them to go a step further; it’s the Very Hungry Caterpillar.”

He added that Europe must act swiftly or risk becoming subservient to the United States. “We have to wake up, we have to rearm, we have to integrate our market and we have to seek new alliances,” Mr De Wever told the forum.

“He can make us slaves, and we are slaves then,” he added, lamenting Europe’s dependence on the US.

Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary-general, has prepared a raft of options to address Mr Trump’s security concerns over Greenland, should he meet the US president at Davos.

One option, previously reported by The Telegraph, was an “Arctic Sentry” mission under the alliance’s banner to boost security in the region.

In recent weeks, Mr Rutte has been collecting other ideas from Nato member states.

One proposal was to put 5,000 troops on the island, but planners believe the security situation is better addressed by boosting naval and aerial patrols and deploying more intelligence capabilities to the region.

Europe remains divided over how to respond to Mr Trump’s immediate threats to impose a 10 per cent tariff on seven EU countries and Britain, unless Denmark sells Greenland to the US.

Germany, Italy and the European Commission favour a cautious approach for fear of an economically damaging trade war with the US.

EU leaders will hold an emergency summit in Brussels on Thursday to discuss their response to the crisis.

The Pentagon reportedly plans to cut its participation in a range of Nato advisory groups amid Mr Trump’s drive to scale back American presence in Europe. According to the Washington Post, the move will diminish US involvement in the alliance’s 30 “centres of excellence”, which train Nato forces on key elements of warfare.

Since Mr Trump’s return to office, he has sought to reduce the alliance’s reliance on the US while pressing allies to take greater control of the continent’s defence.

Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, said that the old world order was now dead and warned that global leaders must adapt.

He said: “We understand this rupture calls for more than just adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.

“We know the old order is not coming back – we shouldn’t mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we believe we can build something better, stronger, more just.”