US seizure of Greenland is ‘not going to happen’, says David Lammy
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UK foreign secretary plays down idea of Trump taking control, in speech exposing differences with president-elect. The UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, has said a US military seizure of Greenland is not going to happen, as he played down Donald Trump’s threats to seize the territory from Denmark.
“No Nato countries have gone to war [with each other] since the establishment of Nato, and I do not envisage that,” he said, adding: “It is not going to happen.”. Lammy’s remarks, in a round of broadcast interviews in advance of a setpiece speech on Thursday, formed part of an array of views that exposed subtle differences with the Trump administration covering defence spending targets, the scale of the threat posed to Europe by Vladimir Putin, the return of the Islamic State-linked detainee Shamima Begum to the UK and the possibility of convincing China not to throw in its lot with Russia.
The differences emerged despite Lammy insisting he was not in the business of condemning the UK’s closest ally, but they underline how taxing it may be for the Labour government to tread an independent course with a demanding Trump administration. The foreign secretary tried to square off the differences by arguing that much of what Trump said should not be taken literally. He said: “We know from Donald Trump’s first term that the intensity of his rhetoric and the unpredictability of what he says can be destabilising.
