Starmer needs to ‘suck it up’ and invite Donald Trump on a state visit, Baroness Harriet Harman says

Published

8 months ago

November 8, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer needs to “suck it up” and invite Donald Trump on a state visit after winning the US election, Labour peer Harriet Harman has said.

The prime minister congratulated Mr Trump on Wednesday’s victory and said having had dinner with him a few weeks ago “I look forward to working with him in the years to come”.

However, he has not always chosen his words so carefully, in 2016 calling Mr Trump’s comments “on issues such as Mexican immigrants, Muslims and women… absolutely repugnant”.

Politics latest: Farage offers to help PM with Trump

New Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used her first Prime Minister’s Questions after being elected to ask the PM whether Foreign Secretary David Lammy had apologised to Mr Trump for calling him a “racist KKK and Nazi sympathiser”.

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Baroness Harman told the Electoral Dysfunction podcast Sir Keir and Mr Trump will both be in office for the next four years and the US is “important for our economy and our security”.

“So we have got to bite the bullet, suck it up and just get on,” she said.

Baroness Harman said there was “a bit of a shiver and a cringe” when Sir Keir gave his congratulations to Mr Trump, but said: “He was right to do that.”

She added Mr Trump needs to be invited on a state visit to the UK.

“He’s got to be invited to address both houses of parliament,” she said.

“They [the US] are key for our economy and our security.”

Mr Trump and his wife, Melania, came to the UK on a state visit in 2019 and were met by protests, with a Trump baby blimp making an appearance.

He was welcomed by then prime minister Theresa May days before she resigned.

Two years before, Mrs May had invited him to the UK a week after his inauguration but was left stunned when he said he did not want to go ahead with a state visit if there were large-scale protests against him.

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MP Zarah Sultana who was ousted from Labour announces she is starting new political party with Jeremy Corbyn

Published

4 hours ago

July 3, 2025

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MP Zarah Sultana who was ousted from Labour announces she is starting new political party with Jeremy Corbyn

An MP who was ousted from the Labour Party has announced she is setting up a new political party with Jeremy Corbyn.

Independent MP Zarah Sultana said she and the former Labour leader will co-lead the new party, which she did not provide a name for.

She said other independent MPs, campaigners and activists from across the country will join them, but did not name anyone.

Politics latest: Zarah Sultana’s stinging resignation letter

Ms Sultana also said she was “resigning” from the Labour Party after 14 years.

She was suspended as a Labour MP shortly after they came to power last summer for voting against the government maintaining the two-child benefit cap.

Several others from the left of the party, including Mr Corbyn, were also suspended for voting against the government, and also remained as independent MPs.

However, Ms Sultana was still a member of the Labour Party – until now.

Mr Corbyn has previously said the independent MPs who were suspended from Labour would “come together” to provide an “alternative.

The other four are: Iqbal Mohamed, Shockat Adam, Ayoub Khan and Adnan Hussain.

Mr Corbyn and the other four independents have not said if they are part of the new party Ms Sultana announced.

In her announcement, Ms Sultana said she would vote to abolish the two-child benefit cap again and also voted against scrapping the winter fuel payment for most pensioners.

Ms Sultana also voted against the government’s welfare bill this week, which was heavily watered down as Sir Keir Starmer tried to prevent a major rebellion from his own MPs.

On Wednesday, Ms Sultana spoke passionately against Palestine Action being proscribed as a terror organisation – but MPs eventually voted for it to be.

She said to proscribe it is “a deliberate distortion of the law to chill dissent, criminalise solidarity and suppress the truth”.

Ms Sultana said they were founding the new party because “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper – just 50 families now own more wealth than half the UK population”.

She called Reform leader Nigel Farage “a billionaire-backed grifter” leading the polls “because Labour has completely failed to improve people’s lives.

The MP, who has spoken passionately about Gaza, added: “Across the political establishment, from Farage to Starmer, they smear people of conscience trying to stop a genocide in Gaza as terrorists.

“But the truth is clear: this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.

“We are not going to take this anymore.”

A Labour Party spokesperson said: “In just 12 months, this Labour government has boosted wages, delivered an extra four million NHS appointments, opened 750 free breakfast clubs, secured three trade deals and four interest rate cuts lowering mortgage payments for millions.

“Only Labour can deliver the change needed to renew Britain.”