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      French politician jokes US should return Statue of Liberty for siding with ‘tyrants’

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      A French European parliament member has quipped that the US should return the Statue of Liberty, which it received as a gift from France about 140 years ago, after Donald Trump’s decision “to side with the tyrants” against Ukraine.Trump’s White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, then responded to Raphaël Glucksmann on Monday by calling him an “unnamed low-level French politician” and saying the US would keep the statue.Taunting France’s conquest by Nazi Germany during the second world war before the allied forces – including the US – then defeated the Nazis, Leavitt added: “It’s only because of America that the French are not speaking German right now.” She also said France “should be very grateful to our great country”.Glucksmann, of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, kicked off the exchange Sunday when – evidently with his tongue in his cheek – he said it appeared to him that the US had come to “despise” the statue as well as what it symbolizes.“So, it will be just fine here at home,” Glucksmann said.Glucksmann also referred to a crackdown on “scientific freedom” in the US in his remarks at a political party convention, first reported by Agence France-Presse.His comments amount to a verbal protest after Trump suspended military aid and intelligence gathering on Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to strong-arm its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in the negotiations to end the war started by Russia, which invaded in February 2022.The US president upbraided Zelenskyy during a televised diplomatic meltdown in the Oval Office on 28 February, which caused significant alarm across Europe for appearing to signal that the Trump administration generally favors Russia in the conflict. The US later restored military aid, but on Monday it was reported the US was withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine.Trump and the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, for whom the US president has repeatedly expressed admiration, are tentatively scheduled to talk on Tuesday over the phone about ending the war in Ukraine.Glucksmann’s remarks additionally nodded to Elon Musk’s brutal staffing and spending cuts to the US federal government, which have affected numerous health and climate research workers. Glucksmann said France could be in a position to benefit if any of the fired workers emigrated.“If you want to fire your best researchers, if you want to fire all the people who, through their freedom and their sense of innovations, their taste for doubt and research, have made your country the world’s leading power, then we’re going to welcome them,” said Glucksmann.“Give us back the Statue of Liberty. We’re going to say to the Americans who have chosen to side with the tyrants, to the Americans who fired researchers for demanding scientific freedom: ‘Give us back the Statue of Liberty.’ We gave it to you as a gift.”France did indeed present the 305ft-tall, 450,000lb Statue of Liberty to the US in Paris on 4 July 1884, the 108th anniversary of the American declaration of independence from the UK. The US needed crucial military aid from France to win its revolutionary war and gain independence from the UK.Nicknamed “Lady Liberty”, the torch-bearing statue – designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi of France – was then installed on an island in New York City’s harbor and dedicated in 1886. There is a smaller copy of the statue on an island in the Seine river in Paris.A bronze plaque on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal contains the words of a poem titled The New Colossus, which overtly references the large number of immigrants who arrived in the US in the 19th century and partially reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”Trump has been aggressively pursuing the deportation of immigrants. Recently, his administration deported a Brown University medical professor to Lebanon, despite her having a valid US work visa and a judge’s order not to do so.Prosecutors reportedly alleged that the professor had recently attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among other things.The US also recently deported to El Salvador more than 250 people whom the White House accused of belonging to Venezuelan and Salvadorian gangs, despite a judge’s order halting the flight.David Smith contributed reporting More

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      Bardella, Leader of France’s Far-Right National Rally, Heads to Israel

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      As Jordan Bardella, its young president, tries to distance the party from its history of antisemitism, it is making common cause with Israel against “Islamist ideology.”Jordan Bardella, the young president of France’s far-right National Rally, plans to visit Israel this month in a powerful symbol of his party’s shift from the home of French antisemitism to the country’s most vociferous friend of the Jews.“Antisemitism is a poison,” Mr. Bardella told Le Journal du Dimanche, a Sunday newspaper, announcing that he plans to attend a Jerusalem conference on that subject in late March and visit areas of Israel attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. “Our engagement in this combat is absolute.”No leader of the far-right party, including its perennial presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has previously made an official visit to Israel. But the party’s stand against what it calls “Islamist ideology,” has led it to a sweeping embrace of Israel and the country’s fight against Hamas and Hezbollah. At the same time, the National Rally’s vehement anti-immigrant ideology, aimed particularly at Muslims, has earned it the support of some French Jews.No leader of the far-right party, including its perennial presidential candidate, Marine Le Pen, has previously made an official visit to Israel.Pablo Blazquez Dominguez/Getty ImagesMany French Jews, however, remain steadfast in their opposition to the party. Bernard-Henri Lévy, a prominent intellectual and author last year of the book “Israel Alone,” an impassioned paean to Israel in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, immediately announced that he had dropped out of the Jerusalem conference because Mr. Bardella is going. He informed President Isaac Herzog of Israel of his decision.Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the National Front, which became the National Rally in 2018, famously dismissed the Holocaust as a “detail” of history and called the Nazi occupation of France “not particularly inhumane,” despite the deportation of more than 75,000 Jews to Hitler’s death camps.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gabbard Begins Trip to Visit Japan, Thailand and India

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      Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, is heading to Asia on a trip that will include an appearance at a security conference in India next week.Ms. Gabbard announced in a social media post on Monday that she was traveling to Japan, Thailand and India and would visit France on the way back to the United States.It is Ms. Gabbard’s second international trip as a top Trump administration official. Immediately after she was confirmed a month ago, she traveled to Germany to attend the Munich Security Conference.On Wednesday, Ms. Gabbard arrived in Hawaii, which hosts a large National Security Agency office as well as the military’s Indo-Pacific Command headquarters, officials said. Ms. Gabbard, who represented the state for eight years in Congress, will meet with military and intelligence officers while in Hawaii, according to her social media post, in which she also said she would watch U.S. troops train.The Asia leg of Ms. Gabbard’s trip will culminate in an address on March 18 at the Rasina conference, a multinational gathering of security officials in New Delhi, to which she was invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. There, Ms. Gabbard will hold bilateral meetings with Indian officials and officials from other countries, a senior Trump administration official said.The Rasina conference is often attended by senior Russian security officials and experts. It is not clear, however, whether Ms. Gabbard will have bilateral meetings with Russian officials on the conference’s sidelines.The Trump administration is pushing for a cease-fire between Ukraine and Russia and has been pressuring the Kyiv government to make concessions to end the war.Trump administration officials’ comments at the Munich conference in February left many European diplomats reeling, particularly Vice President JD Vance’s rebuke of Europe for what he said was abridging conservatives’ free speech.But Ms. Gabbard’s remarks, which focused on counterterrorism cooperation between Europe and America, were well received by European diplomats eager for any sign that U.S. intelligence agencies intend to preserve their partnerships with longstanding allies.The senior administration official said Ms. Gabbard intended to strike similar themes in India and would address counterterrorism, cybersecurity, artificial intelligence and intelligence sharing. More

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      Starmer’s diplomatic flurry puts him at centre of attempts to shape Ukraine-Russia deal

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      As Keir Starmer and his aides huddled to discuss their response to Friday’s calamitous White House meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the prime minister’s team pondered whether to issue a statement on social media.Already messages of support were flooding in for the Ukrainian president from other European leaders, including Emmanuel Macron of France and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.But the prime minister decided to stay silent and instead display his backing with action rather than words. After a series of phone calls on Friday night, Starmer brought forward a planned visit by Zelenskyy to London, giving him the opportunity for a symbolic meeting at Downing Street followed by an audience with King Charles.“I picked up the phone to President Trump, and I picked up the phone to President Zelensky,” Starmer told the BBC on Sunday. “That was my response.”Starmer’s flurry of diplomatic activity has resulted in a Franco-British peace effort which puts the prime minister at the centre of European attempts to shape any deal between Moscow and Kyiv.“Starmer’s was a big gesture,” said Bronwen Maddox, the director of the Chatham House thinktank. “Having Zelenskyy here, having that meeting, mattered. There is no need to go rushing around tweeting. He’s now trying to be a bridge between the US and Zelenskyy and Europe, which is a reasonable ambition.”Some even believe this could be Starmer’s “Falklands moment”, referring to the way Margaret Thatcher took on Argentina over the Falkland Islands and in doing so rebooted her flagging premiership. By Sunday morning, Starmer was being backed by the leaders of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.“It’s really important that this summit the prime minister is having today goes well and we support him in that,” the Tory leader, Kemi Badenoch, said on Sunday.Starmer’s calls with Trump and Zelenskyy on Friday night focused on trying to get the minerals deal between the two countries back on track.One Downing Street official said: “We need to ensure there is a minerals agreement and there is a plan for stopping the fighting and giving Ukraine the security guarantees it needs. The minerals deal is still on the table.”View image in fullscreenOfficials rejected reports that Starmer’s call with Zelenskyy had been “emotional”, but said the Ukrainian president had clearly found his encounter with Trump “bruising”. The two men agreed that Zelenskyy would visit London 24 hours earlier than planned, allowing him time for a longer meeting in Downing Street before a trip to Sandringham on Sunday to meet King Charles.Officials said the visit to see the king was a deliberate message to Washington, where Trump is eagerly awaiting his own audience with the monarch, with US officials pushing for a state visit as soon as this year.Starmer then spent Saturday around the cabinet table in discussions with Jonathan Powell, his national security adviser, and other senior officials. They had come to the conclusion there was little they could do to restart US-Ukrainian talks, so decided to come up with an alternative plan to help shape the peace deal.The plan they hit upon was a separate set of discussions, this time involving Britain, France, Ukraine and potentially one or two others, to formulate their own prospective deal to present to the US. The talks would provide a counterbalance to those between the US and Russia which have excluded Ukraine and European countries.Starmer called Macron, who welcomed the idea. But there was one more hurdle to clear: the prime minister had to call the US president for the second time in two days to make sure he was not opposed.Officials briefed on the call would not say what Trump’s reaction to the idea was, or even whether he indicated he would not stand in the way. But the prime minister was sufficiently emboldened by the conversation that he decided to announce the talks on the BBC on Sunday morning.“The second Trump call was much more focused on not wanting to go back over what has happened, but saying, if we move forward with this other plan, would you be interested in us doing that?” said one British official. “There is no point in us doing this if the US didn’t feel there was space for that. Clearly we are doing it, so we thought it was a worthwhile exercise.”Saturday evening culminated with Starmer’s Downing Street talks with Zelenskyy. In front of the assembled press, the prime minister took the unusual step of leaving No 10 to greet Zelenskyy from his car, before walking him back down the street again after their meeting.View image in fullscreen“And as you heard from the cheers on the street outside, you have full backing across the United Kingdom,” Starmer told his Ukrainian counterpart. “We stand with you, with Ukraine, for as long as it may take.”Sunday was yet another intense day of diplomacy for the prime minister, who began by speaking to the leaders of all three Baltic states and then hosted the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, at Downing Street. Meloni, who arguably has the best relations with Trump of any European leader, has called for an immediate summit between the US, EU and other allied countries to discuss Ukraine.From there, Starmer travelled to Lancaster House for his defence summit, which was attended by representatives from across Europe, as well as officials from Turkey and Nato.British officials are aware that all this activity may result in very little. They have yet to secure their main objective – a promise from Trump to offer military backing to any British and European troops posted to secure a new border between Russia and Ukraine.But for now, Downing Street is delighted that the prime minister has managed to navigate the turbulent geopolitics of a Trump-led US, and in doing so prove that post-Brexit Britain can still play a global leadership role.“It’s a testament to the relationship the prime minister has with the presidents of both America and Ukraine that he was able to host Zelenskyy and speak to Trump not once but twice over the days,” said one official.Additional reporting by Angela Giuffrida in Rome More

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      Trial of Former Surgeon Accused of Abusing Nearly 300 Opens in France

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      A former surgeon is accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, mostly children, over 25 years. It is considered to be France’s largest-ever pedophilia case.A former surgeon went on trial in western France on Monday on charges that he raped or sexually assaulted hundreds of people, most of them former pediatric patients, in what is widely considered the biggest pedophilia case in French history.The former surgeon, Joël Le Scouarnec, 74, is accused of raping or sexually assaulting 299 people over 25 years, from 1989 to 2014. Almost all of the victims are his former patients, and almost all of them were children at the time of the alleged abuse. The average age of the patients he is accused of sexually assaulting was 11.The trial opened in the coastal town of Vannes, in Brittany, where Mr. Le Scouarnec was led in by police officers at the start of proceedings.Wearing a black vest, with a bald head and a ring of white hair on the back and sides, he spoke in a clear, slightly hoarse voice as the court confirmed his name, date of birth, and other biographical information.“Your profession before you were incarcerated?” asked Aude Buresi, the presiding judge.“Surgeon,” Mr. Le Scouarnec answered calmly.He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison if convicted, because there are no consecutive sentences in France. He has denied some charges of rape but admitted to touching some patients’ genitals during medical examinations. The rape charges are mostly related to penetration with fingers, which reflects the definition of rape in France.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nine-Month Manhunt for French Fugitive Finally Produces an Arrest

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      A French convict was arrested in Romania months after he had been freed in a brazen daytime ambush that killed two prison guards, authorities said.A French inmate who fled police after armed assailants attacked a prison convoy in May was apprehended in Romania, French officials said Saturday. His capture ended a monthslong hunt for the man, whose violent escape resulted in the deaths of two prison guards.French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau confirmed in a statement on X that Mohamed Amra, the man who was whisked away by two gunmen in a brazen daytime attack, had been taken into custody with the cooperation of the Romanian government.President Emmanuel Macron hailed his capture as “a tremendous success,” and thanked investigators who had been tracking Mr. Amra “for months and months.” He added: “I am thinking of the families of the prison staff he had killed.”The Paris prosecutor’s office said the man arrested was “very likely” to be Mr. Amra and that investigators were working to conduct the necessary verifications.Violent prison breaks are rare in France. The two prison guards were the first to be killed in the line of duty in 32 years, and the case raised uncomfortable questions about France’s overburdened prison system and whether authorities had fully grasped how dangerous the inmate, a violent criminal known as La Mouche, or The Fly, was.He had been sentenced to 18 months in prison for burglary, one of numerous convictions for crimes including extortion and assault. But he was also under investigation on more serious charges — in Marseille, in connection with a kidnapping and homicide and in Rouen, in connection with an attempted homicide and extortion case.An undated photo of Mohamed Amra.InterpolFrench news outlets had reported that Mr. Amra had been involved in international drug trafficking and organized crime, but Laure Beccuau, the top Paris prosecutor, said at a news conference in May that Mr. Amra had no drug-related convictions.Officials have not released details about the investigation into the other people involved in the brutal ambush. During the May attack, assailants rammed a police van carrying Mr. Amra and then hooded men with automatic weapons circled the van, firing bullets into the vehicle for over two minutes.The attackers fled in stolen cars that were later found burned. The attack, which came as France was trying to project an image of law and order ahead of the Paris Olympics, was captured on video by security cameras and bystanders, and videos were later shared on X.It occurred on the same day that a Senate committee completed a report on rampant drug trafficking in France and recommended the creation of a French equivalent to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.France has been faced with a rise in drug violence and crime, not limited to traditional hot spots or big cities.A 2024 Senate report found that “the intensification of trafficking in the rural areas and the moderate-sized cities” had come with particularly brutal violence.Aurelien Breeden More

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      French far-right leader cancels CPAC speech over Steve Bannon’s ‘Nazi’ salute

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      The French far-right leader Jordan Bardella on Friday morning cancelled a scheduled speech at the US Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, after Donald Trump’s former aide Steve Bannon flashed a fascist-style salute there hours before.Bannon, who helped Trump win office in 2016 and is now a popular rightwing podcast show host, finished his CPAC speech on Thursday with an outstretched arm, fingers pointed and palm down – a sign that echoed the Nazi salute and a controversial gesture made by the tech billionaire Elon Musk at the US president’s second inauguration in January.Bardella, of the far-right National Rally party in France, pulled out of CPAC citing Bannon’s allusion to “Nazi ideology”.The salute during Bannon’s speech brought cheers from the audience at the US gathering.Bardella, who was in Washington ahead of his appearance and had said he intended to talk about relations between the US and France, issued a statement saying: “Yesterday, while I was not present in the room, one of the speakers, out of provocation, allowed himself a gesture alluding to Nazi ideology. I therefore took the immediate decision to cancel my speech that had been scheduled this afternoon.”The National Rally party was bested in France’s snap election last summer by a leftwing alliance.Bannon on Thursday night fired up the CPAC crowd, where he spoke directly after Musk, the man who has eclipsed him in Trump’s circle and with whom Bannon is not on good terms.“The only way that they win is if we retreat, and we are not going to retreat, we’re not going to surrender, we are not going to quit – we’re going to fight, fight, fight,” Bannon said of opponents, echoing Trump’s exhortation to supporters following the assassination attempt on him.Bannon then flung out his right arm at an angle with his palm pointing down. The Nazi salute is perhaps more familiar, especially from historical footage of Adolf Hitler, with the arm pointing straight forward – but the fascist overtone of Bannon and Musk’s signals has been unmistakable.The Anti-Defamation League, which campaigns against antisemitism, defines the Nazi salute as “raising an outstretched right arm with the palm down”.“Steve Bannon’s long and disturbing history of stoking antisemitism and hate, threatening violence, and empowering extremists is well known and well documented by ADL and others,” the Anti-Defamation League wrote on X in response, adding: “We are not surprised, but are concerned about the normalization of this behavior.”Bannon, speaking to a French journalist from Le Point news magazine on Friday, said the gesture was not a Nazi salute but was “a wave like I did all the time”.“I do it at the end of all of my speeches to thank the crowd,” Bannon said.However, from video, when he shoots his arm in the brief, straight-arm gesture, then nods sharply with a smile, to audience cheers, and says “amen”, it looks distinctly different from the very end of his address, when Bannon walked about the stage saluting the audience, throwing first his right arm out, then his left arm out, in a looser gesture that looked much more like conventional post-speech acknowledgment of a crowd.Online, some far-right users suggested Bannon had made the gesture purposely to “trigger” liberals and the media. Others distanced themselves.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionNick Fuentes, a far-right influencer and Trump ally who uses his platform to share his antisemitic views, said in a livestream that Bannon’s salute was “getting a little uncomfortable even for me”.Bannon’s gesture, like Musk’s, has been characterized by some as a “Roman salute” – though some historians argue that is a distinction without a difference. Some rightwing supporters have argued, without evidence, that the Roman salute originated in ancient Rome. Historians have found, instead, that it was adopted by the Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini in the 1920s, and then Hitler’s Nazi party in Germany.However the ADL concluded that in that group’s view Musk had “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute”.The Bannon speech showcased CPAC’s evolution from a traditional conservative conference to an all-out Trump-centric rally. Bannon also spoke about the forthcoming election in 2028, prompting cheers of “We want Trump,” and saying himself: “We want Trump in 28.”The statement echoed those of Trump himself, who on Wednesday asked a crowd if he should run again, was met with calls of “four more years”, and called himself a “KING” in a post on social media. US presidents are limited to two terms.Meanwhile, Musk on Thursday brandished a chainsaw at CPAC, gloating over the slashing of federal jobs he is overseeing across multiple departments, in the face of legal challenges and protests. He called it “the chainsaw for bureaucracy”.It was handed to him on stage by Argentina’s rightwing president, Javier Milei. More

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      As the US retreats, Europe must look out for itself – so is Macron’s nuclear offer the answer? | Simon Tisdall

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      The startling contempt for Europe’s intensifying security concerns displayed by Donald Trump and his henchmen has brought an old, controversial question back to the fore: should Britain and France pool their nuclear weapons capabilities and create a Europe-wide defensive nuclear shield to deter Vladimir Putin’s Russia, if the US reduces or withdraws its support?Trump has not so far explicitly threatened to cut US nuclear forces based in Europe. But speaking last week, the president said he wanted to halve the US’s defence spending, especially on nuclear weapons. Trump often denigrates Nato, keystone of European security. Last year, he encouraged Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to member states that, in his view, spend too little on defence.Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, warned Nato defence ministers in Brussels that defending Europe was no longer a strategic priority, and raised the prospect of US troop withdrawals. In an insulting speech at the Munich security conference, he minimised the threat posed by Russia. Americans would not be taken for “suckers” by Europeans, he said.These unprecedented assaults on US-Europe ties have raised real fears of a damaging, possibly permanent rupture with Washington. It is against this volatile background that France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, has called an emergency summit in Paris of European leaders, including Keir Starmer. The meeting is expected to focus on Ukraine, its future defence, and Europe’s anticipated exclusion from US “peace talks” with Russia due later this week.Yet an even bigger issue overshadows the summit: how to better organise Europe’s collective defences in the context of reduced, unreliable or nonexistent US support and overt nuclear threats from an emboldened Russia. Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defence minister, has predicted that Putin could attack at least one Nato country within the next five years. Frontline Poland and the Baltic republics voice similar fears.Nato’s chief, Mark Rutte, has urged all 32 member states to expand defence spending. Many, including Britain, appear poised to do so. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, dismayed by what looks to many in Kyiv like US betrayal, told the Munich conference it was time to create an “army of Europe”. That reflects ideas long promoted by Macron, a passionate champion of more integrated, expanded, self-reliant European defence – and reduced US dependence.It is Macron who is leading the debate about a pan-European nuclear shield. The French leader gave new prominence to the idea in a 2020 speech at the École de Guerre in Paris, when he suggested a “strategic dialogue with our European partners … on the role played by France’s nuclear deterrence in our collective security”. Macron repeated the offer in 2022 and again last year.France is not proposing to place its independent deterrent, the force de frappe, which comprises about 290 warheads and operates separately from Nato, under the control of other countries – or the EU. What Macron is saying, like François Hollande and other French leaders before him, is that there exists a “European dimension” to France’s nuclear defence planning. If, for example, Berlin were threatened with nuclear destruction, that would be seen as a threat to Paris, too.“French leaders have three main worries,” an analysis published by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) stated. “Firstly, there is a high risk that Trump could withdraw from Nato, or at least significantly reduce US conventional forces in Europe … Secondly, he may also reduce the number of US nuclear weapons currently deployed in Europe, though not much evidence currently supports that prospect.“Thirdly, and most importantly, a US president who loathes or dismisses many European countries is unlikely to risk American lives for Europe.” This latter argument has circulated in France since the days of Gen Charles de Gaulle, who created the force de frappe: namely that, if push came to shove, the US would go nuclear to save Boston but not Boulogne, Bratislava or Bognor Regis.Macron’s proposal raises numerous, complex questions. Among them, who could order the actual use of “Europeanised” nuclear weapons? Who would pay for such a force, especially if necessarily modernised and enlarged? Would such a move make matters worse, by accelerating US disengagement?The view from Germany, a necessary partner in any such project, is mixed. The chancellor, Olaf Scholz, and anti-nuclear parties such as the Greens strongly dislike the idea (as do French leftwing and far-right parties). But Friedrich Merz, Scholz’s likely successor, is reportedly interested. Manfred Weber, a leading German conservative, told the Guardian last year that doubts about Trump meant it was time to take up Macron’s offer. Weber also urged the opening of a “new chapter” with London.The need for British involvement has also been raised by Christian Lindner, another senior German politician. “The question is: under what political and financial conditions would Paris and London be prepared to maintain or expand their own strategic capabilities for collective security?” Lindner wrote last year. “When it comes to peace and freedom in Europe, we must not shy away from these difficult questions.”The IISS study raised similar issues. “As the only other nuclear power in Europe, Britain is a natural partner for France in any exploration of how to strengthen European deterrence … [They] regularly exchange data about nuclear safety and security … The British and French nuclear arsenals combined come to around 520 warheads, numerically equivalent to China’s current deterrent force. This alone could send a stronger message to Russia.”Development of a joint UK-French nuclear umbrella, under the auspices of the European Nato allies and sidelining the US, is politically explosive for Starmer. It would raise questions about sovereign control, not least from the Eurosceptic right. It could be seen by many in Labour as fuelling nuclear weapons proliferation, bringing nuclear war closer. Putin, who has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, would view it as a provocation. So, too, for different reasons, might Trump. It would be a good test of how independent of the US the UK deterrent really is.But as the defence analyst Joseph de Weck argues in Internationale Politik Quarterly, times are changing fast. Governments urgently need solutions to Europe’s rapidly deepening security crisis. “Europeans may simply not have the time for gradualism in security integration any more,” De Weck wrote. Extending French and UK nuclear guarantees to the whole of Europe, including Ukraine, is an idea whose time has come.

      Simon Tisdall is the Observer’s foreign affairs commentator More