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After the humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in Washington, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, quickly convened a meeting at Lancaster House with 17 European leaders, including Mr Zelensky, and Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada. Sir Keir outlined a four-point plan to form a ‘coalition of the willing’ to defend a peace agreement and to keep military aid flowing to Ukraine. Britain gave Ukraine £1.6 billion of export finance to buy 5,000 air defence missiles, to be made by the French-owned company Thales in Belfast. Mr Zelensky requested an audience with the King, which was granted with the government’s approval, and went to Sandringham for tea before a blazing fire.
In the Commons, Sir Keir spoke of President Donald Trump’s continued commitment to peace ‘which nobody in this House should doubt for a second is sincere’. He later spoke to Mr Trump and to Mr Zelensky on the phone. Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, notified the Office for Budget Responsibility of future spending cuts. Anneliese Dodds resigned as international development minister after the increase of British defence spending at the expense of development funding. Tim Davie, the director-general of the BBC, told a committee of MPs that he ‘lost trust’ in a documentary about Gaza and so had withdrawn it from iPlayer; its 13-year-old narrator turned out to be the son of a Hamas official. New leasehold flats in England and Wales will be banned under plans in a government white paper. The government backed a second runway at Gatwick airport.
Regulated rail fares went up by 4.6 per cent, taking an annual season ticket from Southampton to London to £7,477. Jack Vettriano, whose picture ‘The Singing Butler’ sold in 2004 for £744,800, a record for a Scottish painting, died aged 73. On a sunny day 592 migrants arrived in small boats, bringing the total for the seven days to 3 March to 1,005. In 2024, 6,100 Americans applied for British citizenship, the most ever.
Abroad
Global relations were given a jolt when America suspended military aid to Ukraine. ‘This is a decision which could really push the Kyiv regime to a peace process,’ said President Vladimir Putin’s official spokesman Dmitry Peskov. President Zelensky then declared: ‘I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.’ In a 100-minute speech to Congress, Mr Trump said he had received a letter from Mr Zelensky, which seemed to agree with a tweet he had made earlier, and he blamed President Joe Biden for the price of eggs. The Ukraine crisis had blown up when Mr Trump and the Vice-President J.D. Vance had turned on Mr Zelensky in the Oval Office in front of the cameras. Mr Vance asked him: ‘Have you said thank you once?’ Mr Zelensky had to leave the White House without signing an agreement on Ukrainian minerals. Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a joint letter to Mr Trump said: ‘We watched the coverage of your conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with horror and distaste.’ The shouting match followed a cordial visit a day earlier by Sir Keir Starmer, who had brought to Washington a letter from the King inviting Mr Trump for another state visit to Britain. Mr Trump made positive noises about a trade agreement between the two countries and even about Sir Keir’s plan to give away the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Israel halted all relief aid to Gaza in the absence of an agreement with Hamas to move to the second phase of the ceasefire. America imposed tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. The actor Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, 65, were found dead at home in New Mexico about ten days after they are believed to have died. A private spacecraft launched by the US company Firefly Aerospace landed on the moon. The Duchess of Sussex said on her new television lifestyle series that Chinese takeaways were a favourite in her California home, but ‘even when I get take-out, I will try to plate it beautifully’.
The PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ party) declared a ceasefire with Turkey after its leader, Abdullah Ocalan, in prison since 1999, asked the group to disband. A car was driven into a crowd at Mannheim, killing two; the driver was arrested. The iceberg A23a, the size of Cornwall and 900ft thick, ran aground off the British possession of South Georgia. The Pope neared the end of his life in hospital with pneumonia. CSH
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