Foreign policy set to dominate PMQs amid unease over deal with Mauritius and Trump’s Gaza comments

Good morning. PMQs is normally dominated by domestic politics, but today – despite the government doing its best to promote an announcement about a £2.65bn investment in flood defences – foreign policy may well dominate. That is partly because of President Trump, and his desire to leave office with the US territorially bigger than it was when it arrived (something that went out of fashion in most parts of the respectable world around the end of the 19th century).

Last night Keir Starmer had dinner with the prime minister of Denmark, the country that has sovereignty over Greenland, and late last night No 10 put out a statement that slightly firmed up Starmer’s support for Denmark in its determination to see off Trump’s plan to buy/annex the vast, frozen island. More on that soon.

This reporting is incorrect.

The figures being quoted are entirely inaccurate and misleading.

A person familiar with the views of one cabinet minister said they did not understand why the UK was agreeing to pay large sums of money to Mauritius at a time when the Treasury was telling UK government departments to prepare for spending cuts.

A second person familiar with a different cabinet member’s views said Starmer should cancel the deal. Both suggested Starmer was acting on legal advice from Attorney General Richard Hermer.

Making calls on this story to contacts in government last night, it became clear to me that some of the most senior people in government are opposed to this deal … Just looking through the words in my notebook, “terrible”, “mad”, “impossible to understand” – those are the words I can use, at least at this time of day on air. But there are other words in my notebook. And these are from very senior government sources.

One MP who fears Nigel Farage’s outfit could be closing in on their marginal seat told Playbook the treaty would be “Reform rocket fuel.” “How am I supposed to tell my constituents that we took away their winter fuel allowance to pay a foreign country to take our sovereign territory?” they messaged to say.