In fairness, the U.K. government did demand Apple grant it a backdoor to access user data, teeing up an almighty fight with the U.S. And its online safety laws have tried to rein in tech giants with new rules forcing them to police “harmful” content – much to the annoyance of some U.S. lawmakers.
Still, Starmer managed to hold his own in the face of the impromptu attack. “We’ve had free speech for a very, very long time in the United Kingdom and it will last for a very, very long time,” the PM shot back as Trump looked on.
4) You and whose army?
As Britain and France strained to show Trump that Europe was willing to commit peacekeepers to bolster any Ukrainian ceasefire deal, Vance stepped on a rake.
He claimed that the big minerals deal struck between Kyiv and Washington would actually be a better guarantee of Ukraine’s security than “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”
A soldier of “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years” fires on the Taliban in Afghanistan, 2007. John Moore/Getty Images
The U.K. and France had both fought wars more recently than that — and, while he didn’t name names, Vance was accused by British politicians of disrespecting the memory of the hundreds of soldiers killed while fighting alongside the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Vance called the criticism of him “absurdly dishonest” and insisted he wasn’t referring to the U.K. and France but unspecified countries who didn’t have the “battlefield experience nor the military equipment.” That’s that cleared up, then.