How should Britain deal with Donald Trump?
Moral Maze
BBC
4.5 • 609 Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2025
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Three years on from the invasion of Ukraine, President Trump has called President Zelensky a 'dictator', leaving many to conclude that the US has sided with Russia. We have entered a new phase of an already unstable global order. Keir Starmer meets Donald Trump this week. How should Britain respond? Emphasise friendship in the hope of gaining influence in Washington or stand up to Trump in the knowledge that it will damage relations?
On Ukraine, there are those who argue it’s clear cut: Putin is the dictator, Zelensky is a war hero, and sometimes we have to fight for our values no matter the sacrificial cost. But Trump’s supporters believe ending the war is the moral priority, and if peace comes at the cost of land, that’s a deal worth doing.
But History tells us that realpolitik only gets us so far. Bluntly, Trump’s detractors don’t see him as a rational actor on the world stage, pointing to his plan for Gaza. Domestically, they say, he’s behaving like an authoritarian dictator. To his followers, Trump is an important disrupter who is shaking America and the West out of its complacency.
Where should lines in the sand be drawn in negotiations? When is it better to be pragmatic than principled? When should moral conviction trump realpolitik?
Chair: Michael Buerk Producer Dan Tierney Assistant producer: Peter Everett Editor: Tim Pemberton
Panel: Giles Fraser Mona Siddiqui Inaya Folarin-Iman Tim Stanley
Witnesses: Mykola Bielieskov Peter Hitchens Brian Klaas Jan Halper-Hayes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:04.8 | Good evening. The world turned upside down was the tune the British Redcoat supposedly played after their defeat at the Battle of Yorktown sealed America's independence. |
| 0:14.7 | If there were enough of the Redcoat's successors left to make up a band, they might as well be playing it again. |
| 0:22.4 | A month into his second term, |
| 0:27.3 | President Trump has torn up the post-war European security framework, embraced Russia's pariah Putin, accused of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader of being a dictator, |
| 0:32.8 | and blamed his country for being invaded. There are two views on this. One that Donald Trump is an irrational blundering narcissist |
| 0:40.1 | who has unaccountably become the world's most powerful person |
| 0:43.4 | and we should all be afraid. |
| 0:45.1 | The other, he's unconventional, disruptive, |
| 0:47.6 | but not necessarily wrong |
| 0:49.1 | about power, responsibility and attainable peace in Ukraine. |
| 0:53.8 | The question is, how do you deal with him? Our Prime |
| 0:56.1 | Minister is heading to Washington tonight. Should he be pragmatic? Suck up to him, not to put too |
| 1:01.1 | fine a point on it, in the hope of retaining some influence out of national self-interest. |
| 1:06.0 | Or take a principled view. You're wrong. The aggressor shouldn't get away with it. The victim |
| 1:10.5 | shouldn't be betrayed. |
| 1:12.5 | Dealing with Donald. Our moral maze tonight. The panel, Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and inter-religious studies at Edinburgh University, |
| 1:19.4 | the commentator and campaigner in Ayahuilar inman, the historian Tim Stanley and the priest and polemicist, |
| 1:25.6 | Jars Fraser. Tim, from what you've written, you seem more |
| 1:29.2 | sympathetic to Donald Trump than the most commentators. Some people say he's almost beyond |
| 1:33.8 | good and evil because his philosophy is to ask for everything and then take what you can get. |
| 1:39.3 | But it's possible that there might, in the long run, be a moral outcome from that. He has a visceral, personal |
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