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Donald Trump has been opining about the UK again, saying on Tuesday that Keir Starmer was “not Winston Churchill” and repeating his complaint about the deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. Here are some recent things the US president has said about British issues, and how they compare with reality.
‘I will say the UK has been very, very uncooperative with that stupid island that they have, that they gave away and took a 100-year lease; having to do with, perhaps, indigenous people claiming the island that never even saw the island before. What’s that all about?’
The US president has changed his mind over this so many times it has been hard to keep up. It was a good deal, then a bad one. Now it has caused some minor inconvenience to his plans for attacking Iran, he has lashed out – again. There is some slightly mangled truth to what he said: the Chagos Islands deal does give sovereignty to Mauritius in return for a lease on Diego Garcia, the island used for a major UK-US airbase, although this is 99 years rather than 100.
The part about “Indigenous people” is more off piste. The Chagos islanders have been exiled since Diego Garcia was forcibly cleared more than 50 years ago to make way for the base. But the deal is the result of fears that failure to secure the future of Diego Garcia with Mauritius could leave the archipelago vulnerable to incursions by China or others.
‘They got windmills all over the place that are ruining the country, ruining the landscapes. Open up the North Sea.’
The comment, also from Tuesday, is the latest from Trump about windfarms, which he persists in calling windmills. Like Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, he argues that sustainable power sources such as wind blight the landscape and, unlike fossil fuels, are not efficient or reliable.
The aesthetics of wind turbines are a subjective matter, but Starmer and his ministers would disagree about their use. The UK government is prioritising green power sources as a way to ensure reliable energy without being at the mercy of global oil and gas price fluctuations. There is also no evidence that increased North Sea drilling would notably affect global prices.
‘Your energy prices are through the roof.’
Also from this week. Trump has previously said the prices Britons pay for energy are the highest in the world.
Again, within the bluster is a nugget of some truth. When it comes to commercial and domestic electricity supplies, UK users pay rates higher than more or less any other comparable countries.
This is, however, largely down to the dependence of UK electricity prices on gas. Electricity generated by wind and solar is much cheaper, meaning Trump’s message about needing to shift back to fossil fuels misses the point.
‘You have sharia courts adjudicating law.’
Also from Trump’s comments on Tuesday, and part of his ongoing if largely one-way sparring match with the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
This repeated claim is predicated on his seemingly racist belief that many UK cities, notably London, are under the sway of radical Islam.
The claim about sharia courts is not true, in Trump’s sense that they dispense justice. A small number of sharia courts – more usually called sharia councils – do exist, but they are no more than community arbitration bodies with no legal powers, much like the Orthodox Jewish Beth Din courts that also exist in the UK, but which Trump mysteriously never mentions.
