Keir Starmer REFUSES to back Denmark as Trump sets sights on Greenland
Sir Keir Starmer has today refused to back Denmark in its ongoing row with Donald Trump over Greenland.
Trump has been eyeing up incorporating the giant Arctic island into the US since his first Presidency – and in 2025, has escalated his interest in a buyout.
And with the UK caught between the EU and US as part of Labour’s litany of “relations resets”, Starmer declined to back Denmark when pressured on Greenland at a meeting of CEOs in London this morning.
“I’m not going to comment on issues that are not central to what I have to deal with in relation to the UK and the US relationship,” he said.
That was immediately met with fury by long-time Starmer critic Diane Abbott MP, who accused her party’s leader of being “terrified” of the US President.
“Starmer is terrified of Trump,” she wrote on social media, laying into his “refusal to comment on Trump’s plan to buy Greenland”.
That came as Danish PM Mette Fredriksen embarked on a European tour on Tuesday in the hopes of shoring up some EU support against Trump’s long arm in the Arctic.
Across the day, Fredriksen is set to meet her German counterpart Olaf Scholz in Berlin, French president Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte in Brussels.
Denmark’s EU allies have already raised the prospect of European boots on the ground in Greenland, said Jean-Noel Barrot, the French foreign minister.
“Why not, since it is a matter of security,” he said, adding that it “is not the wish expressed by Denmark, but it is a possibility”.
While over the weekend, Austrian general Robert Briegeer, who heads the EU’s military committee, told the German World on Sunday newspaper that sending European troops would be a “strong signal” to the US.
“In my view, it would make sense not only to station US troops in Greenland, as before but also to consider stationing EU soldiers there,” he said.
And Danish foreign minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen has vowed: “Trump will not have Greenland. Greenland is Greenland.
“And the Greenlandic people are a people, also in the sense of international law. This is also why we have said time and again that it is ultimately Greenland that decides Greenland’s situation.”
But any Trump land-grab could end up back on Starmer’s desk thanks to a century-old treaty, Denmark’s last minister for Greenland has claimed.
Tom Høyem explained that “the United Kingdom demanded in 1917 that if Greenland were to be sold, then the UK should have the first right to buy it.”
The demand stemmed from Canada’s status as a British dominion at the time, with the territory lying just miles from Greenland’s shores. The two countries have shared a land border since 2022.