Trump, Greenland and Davos: Allies Recalibrate Fast (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello, we're back on BBC One on a Thursday night, but we're also available every single day as a podcast on BBC Sounds, which you can get by scanning the QR code which is on your screen now. Our podcasting week this week has been very much dominated by Donald Trump.

[00:00:16] Speaker 2: Look, we have the hottest country in the world. They called me daddy. Right, last time. Canada lives because of the United States, remember that? People thought I would use force. I don't have to use force. I don't want to use force. I won't use force.

[00:00:30] Speaker 1: All of this was happening in Switzerland at Davos at the World Economic Forum. And Faisal told us what it was like to be in the room for the president's big speech.

[00:00:38] Speaker 3: This phrase, passive aggressive, or maybe aggressive passive. To be honest, people use it and they don't really know what it means. But like, if you want to know what it means, I think that that's what Donald Trump's speech was.

[00:00:49] Speaker 1: And the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones, revealed he has a personal work coach who's helped him to understand some of his personal flaws. I apparently don't have an innate need to please people, which is surprising given my job. For a politician. And if you want to ensure you never miss an episode, then you can subscribe on BBC Sounds to Newscast. Hello, it's Adam in the Newscast Studio.

[00:01:20] Speaker 4: And it's Chris having just arrived in the Newscast Studio in quite a mild January in London. So excuse the mildly sweaty look, which may ease as the programme continues. Let the listeners decide.

[00:01:30] Speaker 5: We just care what you say, Chris. And I'm Mr. Seth in the Newscast Studio.

[00:01:35] Speaker 6: And I'm Catriona in the Washington Newscast Studio. And there are no mild and balmy conditions over here right now.

[00:01:42] Speaker 1: Sub-zero. Right. You know, Chris, we get these readouts when the Prime Minister meets a foreign leader. And today he was hosting the Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen at Chequers. And this is one of a great Downing Street readout for historic understatement. The leaders began by reflecting on recent developments. So I thought we could do the same. And casting our mind back to sort of when this week really started in kind of dramatic news terms was Donald Trump leaking those messages he'd sent to the Norwegian Prime Minister, where at least he was basically accusing the Norwegian government of intervening or failing to give him the Nobel Peace Prize. And he then said, as a result, he wasn't that bothered about peace in the world anymore. That was kind of like the opening salvo of this incredible week.

[00:02:29] Speaker 5: You couldn't make it up. I was thinking if you went to a book agent and offered this as a story, they'd say, no, no, really, that's just too outlandish. And yet there it is. The thing about Trump, he says what's on the tin. So he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He's really, really upset. He didn't get it because he believes, after all, he ended eight wars by his account. We could put that through BBC Verify. But the fact that he started his letter that your failure to give me the Nobel Peace Prize, and when he was challenged later that the Norwegian government, including the prime minister, does not have any control over the Peace Prize, he basically batted it away and said, yes, they do. They can recommend, they can. And he said, it will not be my main part. It won't be predominant. But he said, I'll still think about it. And then he went on to Greenland. It was an astonishing. And then later in the week, there was even more spectacular trolling when he released the messages that were sent, private messages, by the NATO Secretary General, Marc Rattout, who's known as the Trump whisperer, and he seemed to have proved that this week. We'll talk about the deal on what seems to have been a deal on Greenland. And Emmanuel Macron, who started off by saying, I don't know what you're doing on Greenland and said, let's have dinner in Paris. And Marc Rattout says, can't wait to see you, Marc, the kind of messages we send to each other. And here's President Trump releasing them.

[00:03:55] Speaker 1: But Chris, interesting. Somebody who wasn't in that cache of messages was Keir Starmer. And actually, that sort of is a bit of a metaphor for his slightly more stand back, let's see how things play out kind of stance on this week.

[00:04:08] Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's why Monday morning when the Prime Minister gave his news conference, when he was due to be out and about around the country talking about domestic issues, the cost of living, suddenly feels obliged that he has to step in and appear in front of the cameras and set out his stall. It was a really big moment for him because he's made such an effort to not publicly cross the president. It had happened before. The UK has a different position on the recognition of a Palestinian state, for instance. But on this, he concluded there was a bottom line principle that he had to set out, which was the sovereignty of Greenland, Greenland being in the hands of the Greenlanders and the Kingdom of Denmark, knowing that when he did it, there was a chance that there might be some return of rhetorical anger. And of course, 24 hours later, with the intervention on the Chagos Islands, there was. And then the Prime Minister confronted another moment, Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday, and he noticeably notched up his rhetoric and his tone. There was a definite sense of anger there. And I know from speaking to people in his team, they knew that that came with a risk. This was before, only a couple of hours before, but before the president's climb down. What might he do next? Particularly when you're in this world, you're saying this, where, and everyone can relate to this, whether you're wildly interested in politics or not, where somebody who you are dealing with in a private exchange starts publishing those messages, and where that leaves your trust, even in your day-to-day interactions, let alone on political outlook or worldview or whatever it might be. Extraordinary.

[00:05:39] Speaker 5: What was interesting, Chris, though, was that while he toughened the language, which was quite a departure, he didn't toughen the actions. While some European leaders said, right, we're going to, what was it, the bazooka, you know, retaliatory tariffs, we're going to close off the European market to you. Emmanuel Macron was right out of the, was swift in warning President Trump. But Sir Keir Starmer said, no, no, we shouldn't go for retaliatory tariffs. So up to a point.

[00:06:07] Speaker 4: Yeah, and they had to clarify, so strong was his language on Monday about avoiding retaliatory tariffs, they had to clarify afterwards that they hadn't entirely ruled them out. Even though he had made it abundantly clear, he really didn't want to do it, not least because he was trying to make a moral argument, not only on the sanctity of sovereignty, but also, as he saw it, as the just counterproductive nature of slapping tariffs on your ally. And if you then do that and threaten to retaliate, are you not then threatening to indulge in the very practice that you're condemning?

[00:06:36] Speaker 1: And Katrina, help us out here in the UK, because at one point, the line from Downing Street, then repeated in public by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons on Wednesday, was that the reason Donald Trump had sent off the bad tempered social media post about the UK's deal with Mauritius over the Chagos Islands, including the military base in Diego Garcia, which is used heavily by the Americans. The reason he fired that broadside towards Britain was because he was annoyed that Keir Starmer was siding with the other Europeans in Denmark over Greenland. Is that a good theory to explain why Donald Trump was intervening in British diplomacy so directly?

[00:07:14] Speaker 6: Possibly. I mean, I think he was kind of lumping in all the countries on the other side of the Atlantic together, and he was finding ways that he knows are little niggle points that are contentious on the domestic front, even though he had, of course, supported this in the past. And he was asked about it the next day, and he doubled down on it again and said he'd no idea why the UK had done this deal. Do they need the money, he says. So quite extraordinary. But I think he was just intent on kind of insulting everyone and showing everyone that he's the biggest kid in the yard and he was in charge and this is his way of doing foreign policy. This is his way of handling international relations, that he has a very specific want or need and he will do what he has to do to get it.

[00:08:01] Speaker 1: And then it seemed like the entire world, minus Keir Starmer, were heading to Davos, the World Economic Forum, which is the meeting of prime ministers, presidents, finance bros, tech bros, you name it. Everyone heads to that mountain village in Switzerland. At least the tension was ramping up and up and up about Greenland.

[00:08:19] Speaker 5: Such a high wire act.

[00:08:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, we saw that very long, quite rambling speech by Donald Trump, where he was quite threatening to Canada, he was threatening to Greenland. He said he wanted it.

[00:08:31] Speaker 5: But no, but then you, I'm sure, I wasn't in the room where it happens, but I'm sure there must have been a huge intake of breath when he first started by saying that he knew that by you exercising the immense force that was his disposable, he said, we are unstoppable. And often that's the only way for us to get what we want. But then he kind of said, I won't use force. I could, but I won't. I won't use force. And everyone must have went, must have gone. And then thought, does he really, does he really mean it? Because then he was still threatening, as you as you indicated, with the language. And then after, I don't know, Chris, whether you hear anything in Westminster. You know, our time, you know, we wasted a little bit of time here waiting for this program to start. World leaders are wasting valuable time, like days and days. This preoccupied their mind that President Trump kept saying, I have to have it. And threatening the use of force, which in the worst case scenario would have meant the breakup of the NATO military alliance and unleashed a trade war that we've been talking about, that every leader, that's the worst thing they want, is yet more damage to their already suffering economies. So he had everyone in, you know, in his hold. And then suddenly he comes down and has a meeting with, as I mentioned, Mark Rutter, who once called him daddy, astonishingly for his robust handling of the Iran-Israel war, the way he's pushed other NATO members to increase their defense spending. And they went away and suddenly President Trump came down.

[00:10:12] Speaker 1: Right. Let's talk about what this reveals about the new world we're all living in. Everyone's been talking about the new world order this week. Here's a little postcard from the future. Well, he's an hour ahead because of the time difference in Switzerland. It's our economics editor, Faisal Islam, who's been in Davos watching all of this unfold this week. And here's his take on where we've got to. Hello, Faisal. Hello. For people who've never been to Davos this week or any other week, just can you give us a vignette or a moment that sums up what it was like this time? Yeah.

[00:10:40] Speaker 3: I mean, a moment that you'd get here that you'd get nowhere else is, for example, just to pluck one out of the air, the current chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, playing the previous prime minister, Rishi Sunak, at chess at one in the morning. And a source tells me beating him. But that can't be confirmed with dual sourcing to the BBC standards. You know, that's a rather flippant example. I think sort of high tension and high farce, my favourite example, which we've talked about on Newscast briefly before, was the current Canadian prime minister giving a big geoeconomic speech. And the guy that was Canadian prime minister just last year sort of turning up with his girlfriend and being papped, who happened to be a pop star, Katy Perry. And you know, both those things together and you get this sort of vibe of this place. High thinking, a bit of high farce.

[00:11:34] Speaker 1: That combination makes me very jealous that you got to go this week and I didn't. We recorded an episode of Newscast on Wednesday at the height of the drama over what Trump was going to do or not do over Greenland. Then we got the news that he was, well, some people say climbing down. How has that situation felt today?

[00:11:53] Speaker 3: Yeah, I wouldn't say it totally unravelled, but it's definitely, you know, being picked through, picked apart, contradicted by the Danish prime minister. Stuff gets briefed that, well, he's got sovereignty over something as a guarantee. The Danes deny it. The person that negotiated said it wasn't quite like that. But you know, close up like this, you get the sense that the whole exercise is designed to manage and contain one man and what he thinks and what he shoots from the hip and to try somehow to try and channel that into policy that can function. The very interesting thing about what we saw here was his world, Trump world, which obviously there was drama enough in how that is managed in America, but to see that collides so sort of astonishingly with the rest of the world was quite something. And when he's up with individual foreign leaders, everyone's very polite and tries to flatter because they think that that's the best way. When there's loads of other people to impress, that's not the strategy because everyone else sees exactly what you're doing in real time. So I think we saw, if you like, a kind of window of reality into how the world might work that might even have cut through with the president of the United States.

[00:13:19] Speaker 1: And are you seeing concrete examples of this new world order in action? And I don't mean Trump doing dramatic things and ripping up the rules. I mean that everyone else finding new ways of doing things, because we've heard a lot of talking and a lot of rhetoric from people like Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, that there's got to be a new way of doing things. I'm not necessarily sure I could point to you examples of them actually doing that. Yeah.

[00:13:42] Speaker 3: OK, so Europe would point to this example of having brandished their big economic bazooka, their sort of the way in which you hit back against tariffs with all power and all force. By readying that in advance as an aggressive move, making clear to business leaders that this was going to affect them, the message got to the Trump cabinet pretty quickly and it got to Trump full stop, which was an achievement. And they might not have tried to do that or got the unanimity that they would have normally needed in Europe. I think another example would be this Board of Peace, this thing set up by Donald Trump, which was meant to be about Gaza reconstruction. It's a kind of wider thing now. A lot of people, I think, in Trump, the first year of Trump's second term, would have felt the need to sign up to that. But there was a collective decision, it seems, coordinated, boycotted essentially by the European Union, which the UK also joined in.

[00:14:45] Speaker 1: Well, so Faisal, lastly, this is such a quintessential Davos scene. You're wearing your gilet, talking about the fate of the world. And in the background, I can hear the tinkle of a pianist, presumably at a cocktail party, being attended by at least one president.

[00:14:58] Speaker 3: No, not just any pianist. That is Yo-Yo Ma playing in the background of newscasts for the first time. That's Yo-Yo Ma, the cellist, sorry, being accompanied, of course, by the piano. The piano is his accompaniment. But yes, that's literally what's happening. People will come out of here. We might even get a shot of them. He might even come out of here. I can't get it. We'll get a picture of the cello for you.

[00:15:19] Speaker 1: Do you know what, Faisal? Let's just pause for a second and let's become Radio 3 for a second and see if we can hear Yo-Yo Ma doing a live recital for delegates of the World Economic Forum, but also listeners and viewers of newscasts. Oh, it's gone very quiet. I think they're making remarks now. Can't hear anything. Yes. Faisal, thank you very much for bringing us all aspects of the World Economic Forum, political, economic and cultural. Well, I hope Yo-Yo Ma, the world's best cellist, enjoyed listening to Faisal Islam while he was playing at Davos. Yeah, just sums up what a weird place it is. Lise, that idea of there's now a new world where there's Donald Trump and his allies and we saw his new Board of Peace being unveiled today. So it's pretty clear who his allies are. And then everyone else potentially led by Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister. Is that shaping up to be kind of the new red team and the blue team for the world?

[00:16:17] Speaker 5: I should just add a little half-phrase when you said the new world order, the dismantling of the post-war architecture by President Trump and putting America at the centre of a new order. This Board of Peace has put President Donald J. Trump as the president chairman for life as the head of this so-called Board for Peace. It's absolutely breathtaking. But you want to talk about Mark Carney. I think Mark Carney's speech has gone down really well. There's been great applause in Canada. The media will tear him apart when it's all over. But for the moment, it's a very proud moment. They feel he got the measure of the moment and there was no soft peddling.

[00:17:03] Speaker 7: Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy and geopolitics have laid bare the risks of extreme global integration. But more recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.

[00:17:31] Speaker 5: He was absolutely clear. In his words, this is not a transition. It is a rupture. And he talked about all the ways and I was really surprised, he not only just talked about what we often hear these days, the rules based international order, but he spoke as Canada's middle power, I think in the world rankings out of the ninth or the tenth economy in the world, a country which often relies on soft power, as we call it, rather than hard power. But he said that we middle powers, you know, the rules didn't benefit everyone. And so he called it the hypocrisy of this rules based order. So he called it for what it was, but still, the old days, they weren't so great either. But he said they worked, they worked. And for middle powers, this was all about the middle power, the middle powers, we dependent on organizations like the World Trade Organization, like the United Nations, like the Climate Treaty. These institutions were the ones which would help us to ensure that the rules were fairer against the big powers. But now he's, again, he kind of, it was a clarion call to let's call it like it is. This phrase he used when he made a trip to China, which itself was significant, given the long years of tension. We have to deal with the world the way it is, rather than the way we wish it to be. We have to name the reality. And I think it really, he got a standing ovation, because he was basically saying we've got to get together to fight against the big powers, because it is no longer in our interest. Now, having said that, even though he said, let's name the reality, neither he nor President Macron, who had his own version of it, or Ursula von der Leyen, nobody mentioned the T word. When you're listening to them, you think, is he talking about President Trump? Or is he talking about Vladimir Putin? Or are they talking about Xi Jinping? Of course, they were talking in this moment about President Trump, but nobody said, nobody named President Trump by name, because they know there are consequences, back to the cost of living and the tariffs, and Canada is so vulnerable. But I loved also the fact, the final point I will make is, he's a banker, he could have quoted John Maynard Keynes, he could have quoted all kinds of John Kenneth Galbraith, he could have quoted lots of people in, you know, the annals of economic theory. Instead, he quoted the Czech dissident Václav Havel, and how the story of the green grocer who used to put up every day in his shop, workers of the world unite, even though he knew it wasn't true. But he put it up there, and he used it as his way of saying, we're all pretending.

[00:20:02] Speaker 1: And Chris, I mean, Keir Starmer is going to go to China as well, be so interesting to see if there's now a whole new conversation about the UK's relationship with China, because Mark Carney's got a completely new relationship for China and Canada.

[00:20:13] Speaker 4: Yeah, and it sits in a pattern where Mark Carney has been to China, where you've seen Emmanuel Macron go to China recently, the German Chancellor will go soon, I think President Trump will go within the next few months, and the Prime Minister expected there pretty soon. Off the back of something that would have made more news, I think, this week, had it not been for the international picture, which was seemingly the end of this incredibly long running saga about whether China could get a new embassy here in London. It's been kicking around for ages, and it has been given approval, much to the dismay of some who see it as a kind of colossal spy den. Curiously, the UK wants a new embassy in Beijing, and that's part of it. And there are some in the spooky world, if you like, who think actually having one big site as opposed to scattering of sites in London, in a security sense, might actually be better.

[00:21:05] Speaker 5: There's some conditions, though, I think. Yes, there is. Yeah.

[00:21:08] Speaker 4: Yeah. Anyway, all of that sort of done, the Prime Minister, we expect, is going to head to China. And he is not known for the kind of, if you like, high flying rhetoric of Mr. Carney. But I think the vision, if you like, is a similar one, which is a changing world order, the increasing might of China. I mean, extraordinary increasing might, isn't it, when you sit it back versus 20, 30 years ago. And I think the argument he'll make, I think he'll take a plain load of business leaders, so it'll be very economic leaning, so that he can talk about the cost of living and people's pockets and all the rest of it, and push back against that moniker of never here, here, in the sense that he's forever on the international stage. And make an argument that, look, as he would see it, the UK has to have a pragmatic relationship with this coming superpower, whilst being alert to the fact it has a very different worldview and yes, the spying questions, the security questions, etc, etc. And he'll set it in the context against those who will say domestically and internationally. So I think there are some reservations in Washington around some of their European and near neighbour allies, as they might see it cozying up to Beijing, of saying, well, look, this is what plenty of our allies are doing, and this is a sensible thing to do, they will argue.

[00:22:24] Speaker 1: And Katrina, in terms of how this affects American politics, and Donald Trump's kind of voter base. I mean, we hear this week in Europe, been treating Donald Trump a bit like, like an old school monarch, sort of forgetting that he's elected, and he's the head of one of the branches of government. And there's lots of other sources of power in America, they might not seem very powerful at the moment, but they do exist.

[00:22:45] Speaker 6: They do exist. But yes, they don't seem very powerful at the moment at all. There was a congressional delegation of mostly Democrats and two Republicans went to Copenhagen over the weekend to meet representatives of the Danish and Greenlandic government. And they sort of promised them, oh, Congress will have a check on the power of this president. But there's really no evidence to show that they have done that in the past year, or that they would be able to do that in the months ahead. And I think that's, you know, also why we saw Mark Carney make that speech, nostalgia is not a strategy. In the old days, you would have relied on Congress, even on the Supreme Court to have a check on this president's power. Well, the Supreme Court has said he has immunity. So he has almost, you know, a limitless amount of power here. And then when you saw the speech that President Zelensky gave towards the end of the gathering in Davos, really bookending and reflecting some of what Mark Carney had said, saying, you know, Europe, you seem to be waiting for President Trump to cool down. And that's your strategy of approach. That's not good enough anymore. President Trump says he loves Europe, but he won't talk to a Europe that cowers from him and backs down at every point. And he had really strong words, really critical of Europe.

[00:23:58] Speaker 8: Everyone remembers the great American film Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andy McDowell. Yes, but no one would want to live like that, repeating the same thing for weeks, months and of course, for years. And yet that's exactly how we like, how we live now. And it's our life. And every forum like this one proves it.

[00:24:32] Speaker 6: Echoing at times, actually, some of what President Trump had said about Europe. So the leaders got quite a battering this week. Trust is completely frayed. Does anyone here in the U.S. pay attention to that or really care? They do to the point at which he's not here putting attention on the cost of living crisis, the affordability crisis, gas prices or petrol prices have come down, food prices haven't. There's an energy price crisis here at the moment. We've seen what's been going on in Minneapolis and Minnesota over the last couple of weeks, protests there over stepped up ice raids. There's a lot going on in this country. And there's a sense that President Trump has taken his eye off the ball. That's not me saying that. That's been borne out in a number of polls that we've seen in the last week.

[00:25:15] Speaker 1: So, Chris, we've talked about Donald Trump, Mark Carney, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Mark Rutter, the Danish Prime Minister, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Zelensky. Let's end on Andrew Gwynne.

[00:25:28] Speaker 4: Yeah, a splash of domestic politics just to end, which is intriguing. So Andrew Gwynne is a Greater Manchester MP, got himself into a spot of trouble with some WhatsApp exchanges that he apologized for after they were printed in the newspaper, had the whip withdrawn. So he was sitting as an independence MP, has had quite a lot of mental health difficulties. He has announced, as we record on Thursday, that he is going to stand down. Now, that in and of itself would matter up to a point. The reason it is turbocharged and how it matters is, what about the ambitions of the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham? He has been, it would seem, keeping an eye on the possibility of returning to Westminster with a view that he has prime ministerial ambitions. As we record, he has not said anything. And so now begins an extraordinary domestic political soap opera, which may or may not last a long time. Does he want to run? If he wants to run, does Labour's National Executive Committee let him run as the Labour candidate because he's a sitting mayor? And they have a rule about that because they'd have to be a mayoral contest and that's expensive and that is politically risky. If he does run, does he even win given where Labour are in the polls, given reform and the Greens and others? If he does win and he's back at Westminster and Labour do poorly, as is expected in the elections coming up in May, devolved elections in Scotland and Wales, English local elections in many parts of England, he is then an MP with a prime minister potentially in deep trouble. Is there then a leadership race with him as a candidate? And plenty of Labour MPs like him and Labour members. Others would rather it not be him, might want Keir Starmer or Wes Streeting or Shabana Mahmood or whoever. But right now we stand on the brink of what could be an extraordinary spring of soap opera around a by-election where the only question that will follow is if he becomes a candidate. And that remains an if, if, if, if. There's a lot of ifs here. Do you want to be prime minister? And that could be spectacularly distracting. You know, we've talked about the international distractions for the prime minister. Spectacularly distracting on the domestic front with this soap opera of a wannabe trying to find his way back to Westminster.

[00:27:52] Speaker 1: So Andy Burnham will end this week reflecting on future developments. Yes, to the readout.

[00:27:57] Speaker 5: You know, I often say about our job, thank God we only have to talk about it. You don't have to fix it.

[00:28:02] Speaker 4: Yes, it's much easier to ask questions than to answer them, isn't it?

[00:28:06] Speaker 1: Well, on that note, Lise, thank you very much. Thank you. Katrina, thanks to you too.

[00:28:10] Speaker 6: Thank you.

[00:28:11] Speaker 1: And Chris, good to catch up. Thank you. Do I look a bit less sweaty now we're finished? Yeah, you do, yeah. Both of you. Slightly, even though that brain has been working very hard. And that's all for this episode of Newscast. Thank you very much for watching. Bye-bye.