Alastair Campbell

Come the middle of June, this war will have gone on for as long as the First World War, okay?

So there rightly should be an impetus by everybody to try to bring it to a halt.

And every time that Putin seems to have wheedled the American side over to a certain way of thinking, the Europeans have managed to wheedle him back.

What I think you're saying, what Diane's saying, is Europe has to stop playing that game and understand actually this is the time to step up.

So Keir Starmer's got yet another, hosting yet another coalition of the willing meeting today, Tuesday.

That will probably push back a little bit more on the Americans.

Zelensky will probably come out and welcome what they're saying, what they're doing.

But I think we have reached this point of saying that Trump is a deeply unreliable ally.

You and I keep saying it, and lots of people that we know in those circles keep saying it.

Does a point come where one or more of these European leaders takes the inevitable?

hit diplomatically, economically, in all security, all these other ways that would come from actually coming up and saying Trump can no longer be relied upon either to respect the rule of law, respect international order, or to be a reliable ally for Europe.

Absolutely.

You see, I said we weren't going to talk about the budget, but in a way, I think that when the debate was going on about whether Labour should be putting up tax or not, I actually think it could have been and should have been related to this debate.

Because Britain is not remotely having this debate about whether the French are.

The French, as I said on that episode we did on Ukraine the other day, the French chief of staff addressing all the mayors of France.

and saying, are we preparing our people for what might lie ahead?

Now, when you and I said that the other night, we had all the bots coming out saying, warmongering, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

But just as what you're saying is we have to take Trump at face value and reach the conclusion that this guy is not on our side, equally, we have to take Putin at face value, which is that he's going to keep going.

He has not budged an inch

In all of the talk that's gone on.