President Donald Trump couldn’t resist telling the British Prime Minister to get on with ending the UK’s migrant crisis, saying “it doesn’t matter which means you use” but that it’s easier to stop people coming than to remove them once they’ve arrived.
The final set-piece event of the two-night second full state visit to the United Kingdom for President Donald Trump passed at Chequers, the country residence of the British Prime Minister, with a joint press conference for the President and Sir Keir Starmer. The moment of maximum political danger for Starmer, Trump was studiously polite in his prepared remarks and largely refused to rise to the bait when questions from attendant press came.
While this was likely out of respect to the host, President Trump was evidently unable to contain himself at several key moments and spelled out in basic terms for the British Prime Minister to understand, how to overcome some of the greatest problems besetting his government.
First among them was the migrant crisis, which has rocked a decade worth of successive British governments of both the now-in-power Labour and previously the Conservatives. That no government has succeeded — or even really tried — to solve the problem is all the more remarkable given border control and migration is unfailingly a major issue at election time and has been for many years.
Signalling the absolute urgency of getting on top of this problem, President Trump warned Sir Keir that mass arrivals of unvetted migrant arrivals “destroys countries from within”. Explaining that his administration had already solved the border crisis in the United States, President Trump told Starmer: “I think your situation is very similar, you have people coming in. And I told the Prime Minister I would stop it, it doesn’t matter if you call out the military, it doesn’t matter which means you use.”
As shocking as this may be to the ears of the British political class, for whom no border control initiative can be gentle enough, President Trump made implicit stopping arrivals was easier and more pleasant than removing illegals once they’d arrived. He continued: “we’re now actually removing a lot of people who came into our country, it’s a very hard chore. We were given a bad hand. Millions of people came in… and we are removing them and I feel very strongly about it.”
British leader Starmer had a stock response ready, and replied “there’s no silver bullet” to President Trump having just handed him exactly that: troops to the border. Starmer cited his oft-repeated 35,000 returns number, which he hails as record breaking and critics dismiss as dishonest — pointing out most of those went home voluntarily — and even tried to invoke the France returns deal.
Hailed as game-changing when first announced weeks ago, the system has theoretically been active all this week but deeply embarrassingly for the government, every deportation plane until today left without a single deportee aboard. Finally in the early hours of Thursday morning one did get off on its mission with a cargo: a single migrant aboard.
Another area where President Trump evidently felt he had to lay out the facts of life to Starmer was on energy prices, which have soared in the United Kingdom to global record highs and are a major contributor to inflation, which remains stubbornly high. Telling Starmer to “drill baby drill”, the President spelled it out: “as you know we brought fuel prices way down. We don’t do wind because wind is a disaster, it’s a very expensive joke, frankly… we got the prices way down and that got inflation down”.
The Starmer government is ideologically committed to wind energy, no matter the cost.
President Trump told Starmer: “you’ve got a great asset here, it’s called the North Sea… I hope, because I love this country, my mother was born in Scotland in the Hebrides, that’s serious Scotland. I want this country to do well, and you have great assets that you’re going to start using under this Prime Minister”.
This is not the first time President Trump has encouraged the British government to help out its own people by getting energy prices down. As reported in May:
Consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom pay some of the highest energy prices in the world, but that need not be the case if the country ditches its dash for renewables and stop blocking new oil drilling.
Praising the U.S.-UK trade deal minted earlier this month, Trump stated: “I strongly recommend to them, however, that in order to get their Energy Costs down, they stop with the costly and unsightly windmills, and incentivize modernized drilling in the North Sea”.
There are “large amounts of oil… waiting to be taken”, the President said in a statement, noting the UK’s “old fashioned tax system disincentivizes drilling”.
Unleashing new sources of energy would see Britain’s energy prices go “[way down], and fast”, he said.
President Trump also made similar remarks on his last trip to the United Kingdom. Back in July, he again called on Starmer to relieve the nation’s economy by going for cheap energy in the North Sea, to deal with the migrant crisis, and to tackle crime. As of yet, there is no indication Prime Minister Starmer has felt inclined to take this advice.
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