Starmer says UK government must ‘rise to the moment’ on tariffs
The UK government needs to “rise to the moment”, Sir Keir Starmer said, adding that he would not “pretend” US President Donald Trump’s tariffs are “good news”.
Speaking this morning after Trump announced a 90-day pause in his sweeping global tariffs, while raising his tax rate on Chinese imports to 125 per cent, the Prime Minister insisted his “government is ambitious for Britain”.
Sir Keir said he would not “pretend that tariffs are good news” and that the government was not “just going to sit back and hope”, but would need to “rise to the moment”.
Starmer told reporters: “This government is ambitious for Britain … and I’m not going to stand here and pretend that tariffs are good news.
“That is not true, and you wouldn’t believe me if I said it, but just as we’ve seen recently on defence and security across Europe, and with Ukraine, they do make one thing very clear, and that is that the world is changing, and we as a country must change with it.”
He continued: “In other words, we’ve got to rise to the moment here, recognise where our future lies, renew Britain and deliver security for working people.
“And that’s why we’ve taken the decision to accelerate our plans to create wealth in every community, and every community is really important here.
“We are not a government [that is] just going to sit back and hope. I strongly believe that is how politics has failed our communities for so many years … what we’ve got to do, what we’re offering, is fundamental change.”
The FTSE 100 rose by more than six per cent after stock markets opened in London on Thursday, following a significant rally for markets in the US and Asia.
Starmer’s words come after the former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who led the UK’s response to the 2008 banking crisis and financial crash, spoke out to call for an “economic coalition of the willing” in response to Trump’s tariffs.
Writing in the Guardian, Brown argued: “As I learned in the financial crisis of 2008, global problems require globally coordinated solutions. We need a bold, international response that measures up to the scale of the emergency.”
He added: “In the same way that, to his great credit, the Prime Minister has been building a coalition in defence of Ukraine, we need an economic coalition of the willing: like-minded global leaders who believe that, in an interdependent world, we have to coordinate economic policies across continents if we are to safeguard jobs and living standards.”
He called on the government to “mitigate the supply-side shocks”, to “keep trade moving”, and to “remind China” that its interests lie in “expanding domestic consumption” rather than “flooding the world’s markets with cut-price goods it cannot now sell in the US”.