Dear Donald: Can Starmer Tame Trump? w/ Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Ed Davey
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Hi, this is Pod Save the UK. I'm Zoe Grunewald. And I'm Coco Kahn. This week, Keir Starmer is preparing to visit the White House, but with Trump clinging to Putin, can he persuade the US president to change his tune on Ukraine? I'll be speaking to the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ed Davey. And later, where is Kemi Badenock? No, seriously, have you seen anything from her? Have I seen anything from her? I haven't, which I'm kind of fine with. But I'm probably not the right audience because my entire X-Feed is just Rupert Lowe. Oh, no. Rupert Lowe and hardcore porn, I think. Weird combination.
I didn't know you were a Rupert Lowe superfan.
don't try it don't do this fake news to me this is not fair but anyway we'll also be asking why the official opposition is missing in action So Zoe, it's lovely to have you back filling in for Nish this week. He's on tour in the States and you're here with me.
I'm here with you and I'm very happy about it, so thank you.
Well, before we get into the big news of the week, I need to tell you about this Elon Musk story. I hate talking about this man, obviously, but it's just a bit mad. So Musk is leading the US Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and he issued hundreds of thousands of federal employees with an ultimatum. And it basically said to respond to an email with the subject line... what did you do last week? They had to respond to this or resign. So yeah, the email said, please reply with approximately five bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager. Musk then followed up on X, failure to respond will be taken as a resignation. So I guess Zoe, the question is, What have you been doing?
This is like every worker's worst nightmare, right? This is actually why I went freelance. I used to have recurring nightmares about my manager asking me to provide five examples of what I'd done that week. I've actually been quite productive. I've been writing a piece about how the far right is obsessed with violence against women and girls. I can see you sort of shifting in your seat. I've done loads of things, I promise. This is a conversation I only ever need to have between myself, now I'm freelance, and my accountant once a year. So I'm not used to it. And apart from that I've just been enjoying lots of great TV. Oh that's good to hear.
Do you want to know what I've been up to? Of course I do. I've done the greatest accomplishment of all time. I changed an NHS medical appointment. Do you know how hard that is? Yeah, I do.
I do know how hard that is.
I have to go into training every morning waking up like... Rocky music. Today, Coco, you are not going to let her hang up on you. You're going to phone at 8am. You're going to sit in that queue. You're going to press every option on the telephone menu until you get a human being. I'm very impressed.
Did you manage to get one for this year? Yeah. That's incredible. I know. Congratulations. Hard work. Hard work. All right, on to people who have definitely been making their jobs count this week. Keir Starmer has made a massive announcement that the UK will increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, funded by cuts to foreign aid. Here's a clip of Starmer on Tuesday.
In the short term, it can only be funded through hard choices. And in this case, that means we will cut our spending on development assistance moving from 0.5% of GNI today to 0.3% in 2027, fully funding our increased investment in defence.
Now, as we record on Wednesday, Starmer will be heading to Washington tomorrow for his first visit to the White House for the biggest test yet, really, of Starmer's diplomatic and negotiating skills. So, Zoe, what's the meeting going to be about?
So Starmer is essentially going to want to try and persuade the U.S. to offer some security guarantees for Ukraine that will contain rather than embolden Russia. So there were lots of questions about this kind of backstop. So if there was a deal that had been agreed, there would have to be provisions in place, potentially boots on the ground from European allies, but also maybe the US as well, that would prevent Russia from seeing an opportunity to go back into Ukraine and invade again. They're also probably going to talk about trade.
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