09/01/2025 10:39
The Guardian
Foreign secretary says Trump’s comments reflect concerns about Arctic security and says there is ‘fine line between free speech and hate speech’ when asked about MuskA Treasury minister will reply shortly to an urgent question about the rise in government borrowing costs. It has been tabled by Mel Stride, the shadow chancellor.Here are some more foreign policy lines from David Lammy’s interviews this morning.Lammy, the foreign secretary, welcomed signs that Donald Trump is backing away from claims that he would be able to negotiate peace in Ukraine within a day of taking office. This was something he said when he was campaigning, but not a claim he has repeated recently. Lammy told the Today programme:Donald Trump is not yet in power. I think the indications are, from what I’ve seen over the last few days, a slight pushback on this sense that somehow a deal will be achieved on January 21, I think that’s now unlikely. And we’re hearing this actually the timetable’s moved down somewhat … towards Easter.He said the UK government agreed with Trump about the need for Nato members to spend more on defence. But he refused to commit to the target of getting defence spending to 5% of GDP, which Trump says should be a goal for Nato members. The UK is currently at 2.3%, but Lammy said the government would set out the roadmap to 2.5% in the spring. Asked about the 5% goal set by Trump, Lammy said the US is only at 3.38%. “So [Trump] would have to set out his own rhetoric of how they were going to get to 5%”, he said.He sidestepped questions about whether Elon Musk’s description of Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, as a “rape genocide apologist” was an incitement to violence. Asked on the Today programme if he thought this went beyond legal free speech, and amounted to incited to violence, Lammy said he disagreed with Musk and thought Phillips had done as much as any MP to protect women from violent men. But, despite Amol Rajan, the presenter, putting it to Lammy that he was a laywer by training, Lammy continued to sidestep the question. He said there was “a fine line between free speech and hate speech”. But he did not say wherer or not Musk had crossed that. Continue reading...
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