Nato<\/a> allies. He said: \u201cActually made a statement, a couple of them, that \u2018we want to get involved when the war is over\u2019. No, it\u2019s supposed to get involved with the war\u2019s beginning, or even before it begins.<\/p>\n\u201cWe had the UK say \u2013 this is three weeks ago \u2013 \u2018we\u2019ll send our aircraft carriers\u2019, which aren\u2019t the best aircraft carriers, by the way. They\u2019re toys compared to what we have. But \u2018we\u2019ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over\u2019. I said: \u2018Oh that\u2019s wonderful, thank you very much. Don\u2019t bother. We don\u2019t need it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cNow they all want to help. When they\u2019re annihilated, the other side is annihilated, they said \u2018we\u2019d love to send ships\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, Starmer told a committee of MPs he did not intend to react to the US president\u2019s repeated insults, marking a significant deterioration of their relationship since Trump\u2019s second state visit in September.<\/p>\n
He told the liaison committee that these comments had been made \u201cto put pressure on me\u201d and that he had been refusing to respond directly because he was \u201cunapologetic\u201d about remaining \u201cutterly focused\u201d on his job.<\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly framed Starmer as weak for not giving the US more support over its war with Iran \u2013 though the prime minister\u2019s position is popular with the British public. He has said that Starmer is \u201cnot exactly [Winston] Churchill\u201d and questioned publicly why he needed to consult his ministers or take advice when it came to military decisions.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Starmer travelled to Finland on Thursday for the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) leaders\u2019 summit.<\/p>\n
Speaking at the presidential palace in Helsinki, the prime minister warned that Britain and its allies must not forget about the threat posed by Russia amid the war in the Middle East.<\/p>\n
He claimed the west was facing a \u201cwar on two fronts\u201d \u2013 Ukraine and Iran \u2013 as he met the other leaders from the JEF, adding: \u201cThe threat from Russia in the north and east has not gone away. In fact, in my view, that threat has grown.\u201d<\/p>\n
He confirmed the Ukrainian navy would join a JEF exercise for the first time in the autumn and praised Kyiv\u2019s \u201cunparalleled\u201d capabilities in countering drone warfare.<\/p>\n
The JEF, a military coalition of 10 northern European countries led by the UK, aims to defend against Russian incursions. It also includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has dismissed British warships as \u201ctoys\u201d in his latest jibe at Nato countries for their lack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-496895","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}