London Mayor Sadiq Khan gained strong support from his Labour party colleagues on Wednesday as senior figures took issue with US President Donald Trump's latest attack on the city leader.
Not for the first time, the UK's Labour government was reeling from a Trump tirade of insults and abuse against Mr Khan.
Mr Trump labelled London’s first Muslim leader a “horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor”.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy robustly defended Mr Khan, saying: “I strongly disagree with those comments” and that her Labour colleague was “doing a really good job”.
Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also defended Mr Khan without referring to the US leader just hours after returning to the UK from a Washington visit. “When it comes to the Mayor of London, you will not be surprised that I, of course, take a strongly different view,” she said in response to questions over Mr Trump’s diatribe. “I think the mayor is doing an excellent job for all of London.”
The US President also suggested, in an interview with Politico, that Mr Khan had been elected on the back of migrant voters and that immigration had “destroyed” the UK capital.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces calls to push back against Mr Trump's narrative of decline. Ms Nandy said in an interview with Sky News that Mr Starmer would also “disagree” with his comments. “I’m sure that if you asked the Prime Minister if he was sitting in this studio today, he would say what I’ve said,” she said.
The problem for the Labour government is trying to strike a balance between placating Mr Trump and tolerating his outbursts, while also holding him accountable when he oversteps.
A Labour backbench MP told The National he thought the comments were “grim, bordering on Islamophobic” and questioned “Trump’s unhealthy obsession with insulting Sadiq”.
Mr Trump accused the Mayor of “doing a terrible job” and said Mr Khan had turned the capital into “a different place”.
Mr Khan himself also hit back in an interview with Politico, saying he thought the president was “obsessed” with insulting him.
“I think the one part that President Trump has got right is that London is becoming a different place. We are the greatest city in the world,” he said.
“I suspect that’s one of the reasons why we have record numbers of Americans coming here to holiday, coming here to live, coming here to invest, or coming here to study.”
But in a sign of the delicate diplomacy, Mr Starmer’s official spokesman was more low-key and repeatedly avoided giving a straight answer when questioned by journalists about the criticisms on Tuesday.
“The Prime Minister has a strong relationship with the US President and the Mayor of London,” he said. “It’s a strong relationship which has produced strong results on security and trade co-operation.”
Mr Trump’s tirade comes with a hardening of his administration's attitude towards European democracies after the White House published its National Security Strategy.
It predicted that European nations were threatened with “civilisational erasure” and would be “unrecognisable” in the next 20 years due to mass migration.
It also praised hard-right governments in Europe while criticising those in the centre and it no longer stated that Russia was a direct enemy. The reaction to it in Europe has been one of consternation and anger.
