Starmer needs to ‘suck it up’ and invite Donald Trump on a state visit, Baroness Harriet Harman says
The prime minister congratulated the US president-elect on his victory but has previously called his comments “absolutely repugnant”.
Sir Keir Starmer needs to “suck it up” and invite Donald Trump on a state visit after winning the US election, Labour peer Harriet Harman has said.
The prime minister congratulated Mr Trump on Wednesday’s victory and said having had dinner with him a few weeks ago “I look forward to working with him in the years to come”.
However, he has not always chosen his words so carefully, in 2016 calling Mr Trump’s comments “on issues such as Mexican immigrants, Muslims and women… absolutely repugnant”.
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New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used her first Prime Minister’s Questions after being elected to ask the PM whether Foreign Secretary David Lammy had apologised to Mr Trump for calling him a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”.
Baroness Harman told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast Sir Keir and Mr Trump will both be in office for the next four years and the US is “important for our economy and our security”.
“So we have got to bite the bullet, suck it up and just get on,” she said.
Baroness Harman said there was “a bit of a shiver and a cringe” when Sir Keir gave his congratulations to Mr Trump, but said: “He was right to do that.”
She added Mr Trump needs to be invited on a state visit to the UK.
“He’s got to be invited to address both houses of parliament,” she said.
“They [the US] are key for our economy and our security.”
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Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, came to the UK on a state visit in 2019 and were met by protests, with a Trump baby blimp making an appearance.
He was welcomed by then prime minister Theresa May days before she resigned.
Two years before, Mrs May had invited him to the UK a week after his inauguration but was left stunned when he said he did not want to go ahead with a state visit if there were large-scale protests against him.
