Minister dismisses Trump’s claim Starmer is ‘no Churchill’ – UK politics live

James Murray says PM has approached Middle East crisis with a ‘cool head’ amid repeated criticism of UK’s position from US president Britain cannot become embroiled in a war “without a clear end point”, a former senior Nato commander has said, as he defended Keir Starmer after Donald Trump’s jibes that he was “not Winston Churchill”. Trump was “another American president who had launched a war of choice,” said Gen Sir Richard Shirreff, as a minister insisted that the UK prime minister had acted “with a cool head” by not allowing British bases to be used for initial strikes. I can understand because people have been concerned about the cost of living for a long time, so when people see what they do on the news, they will wonder ‘what does this mean for us?’ What I would say to people is that it’s early days in terms of what’s happening in the Middle East. We’re all very concerned about what’s happening and, as a government, we’re monitoring very closely, but it is early days, and in terms of how people will experience their energy bills in the immediate future, they will see that reduction come through via the price cap on 1 April.