LONDON — Prime Minister Keir Starmer pushed back on Wednesday against Donald Trump’s attack on Europe, after the U.S. President described the continent as inept. When asked about Trump’s comments during Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, the PM said Europe was united and strong. The U.S. president told POLITICO in a wide-ranging interview Monday that Europe was a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people. He added: “I also think that they want to be so politically correct,” and “I think they don’t know what to do.”  But the prime minister rejected Trump’s criticisms and claimed European nations had robust values worth defending. “What I see is a strong Europe, united behind Ukraine and united behind our longstanding values of freedom and democracy,” Starmer told MPs on Wednesday. “I will always stand up for those values and those freedoms.”  The prime minister hosted Germany, France, and Ukraine’s leaders in Downing Street on Monday for crucial talks on Kyiv’s future, as America tries to formulate a deal palatable to both Russia and Ukraine. But the U.S. National Security Strategy released last week said Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” triggered by excess migration from Muslim-majority and non-European countries. Starmer’s spokesperson on Wednesday also stood up for Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the capital city’s first Muslim mayor, after Trump singled him out for criticism. In the latest back-and-forth of their long-running feud, Trump told POLITICO that Khan was “a horrible mayor” who had made the British capital city a  “different place” from what it once was. “Those comments are wrong. The mayor of London is doing an excellent job in London,” the PM’s spokesperson said. “The prime minister is hugely proud of the mayor of London’s record and proud to call him a colleague and a friend.”  The spokesperson also rejected the U.S. president’s accusation that Khan had been elected “because so many people have come in” as wrong. Khan told POLITICO Tuesday the U.S. president was “obsessed” with him and claimed Americans were “flocking” to live in London, because its liberal values are the “antithesis” of Trump’s.

LONDON — The British government hit back Wednesday after Donald Trump launched his latest broadside at London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The U.S. president told POLITICO in an interview Monday that Khan was “a horrible mayor” who had made the British capital city a  “different place” to what it once was. Trump added of Khan: “He’s an incompetent mayor, but he’s a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job. London’s a different place. I love London. I love London. And I hate to see it happen.” Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, a member of the U.K. cabinet, pushed backed at those remarks Wednesday, and heaped praise on her fellow Labour politician. “I strongly disagree with those comments,” she told Sky News. “I think Sadiq is doing a really good job and has been at the forefront of providing affordable housing [and] improvements to transport.” Nandy said Khan, London’s first Muslim mayor, had offered a model for the U.K. government to follow nationally. “He’s been one of the people who has set up multi-agency approaches to help young people with knife crime, gang violence that we’re learning from in government,” she said. “So I strongly disagree.” Asked explicitly if Trump’s comments were wrong, Nandy replied: “Yes he is.” In his wide-ranging interview with POLITICO, the U.S. president also claimed Khan — who has won three consecutive terms as mayor of London and has no power to determine national migration policy — had been elected “because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” Pushed on why Prime Minister Keir Starmer hadn’t explicitly defended Khan from Trump’s attack, Nandy said she knows “the prime minister would disagree with those comments.” She added: “I’m sure that if you asked the prime minister if he was sitting in this studio today, he would say what I’ve said, which is that Sadiq is doing an incredibly good job for London. We’re proud of our mayors.” Khan told POLITICO Tuesday the U.S. president was “obsessed” with him and claimed Americans were “flocking” to live in London, because its liberal values are the “antithesis” of Trump’s. It’s not the first beef between the two politicians.  Trump once called Khan a “stone cold loser” and “very dumb” — after Khan compared Trump to “the fascists of the 20th century.” In 2018, Khan allowed anti-Trump activists to fly a blimp over parliament showing Trump as a crying baby in a diaper during his first state visit.

LONDON — London mayor Sadiq Khan has hit back at Donald Trump Tuesday for suggesting he owes his election victories to the rising number of migrants in the U.K. Speaking in an interview with POLITICO, Khan responded that the U.S. president is “obsessed” with him and contended that Americans are in fact “flocking” to live in London, because its liberal values are the “antithesis” of Trump’s. London’s mayor urged Trump to clarify his remarks that people who “come in” to Britain helped put Khan in office. “I think it’s for President Trump to explain what he means by that,” Khan said. “I’m unclear.”  The U.S. president, who spoke on Monday at the White House to POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation, asserted that European nations are “decaying” and their immigration policies would render them no longer “viable.” POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. In his Europe-bashing comments to POLITICO, Trump zeroed in on London and Paris, claiming they were each a “different place” to what they once were, and launched an especially incendiary attack on Khan, saying: “If you take a look at London, you have a mayor named Khan.   “He’s a horrible mayor,” Trump went on. “He’s an incompetent mayor, but he’s a horrible, vicious, disgusting mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job. London’s a different place.”  Trump added: “My roots are in Europe, as you know … and I hate to see that happen. This is one of the great places in the world, and they’re allowing people just to come in and … unchecked, unvetted.”  Trump argued immigration would change the “ideology” of European nations, saying of Khan: “He’s a disaster. He’s got a totally different ideology of what he’s supposed to have. And he gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.”  Khan responded: “I think the one part that President Trump has got right is that London is becoming a different place. We are the greatest city in the world.   “I suspect that’s one of the reasons why we have record numbers of Americans coming here to holiday, coming here to live, coming here to invest, or coming here to study.  “I literally have no idea why President Trump is so obsessed with this mayor of London. I’m not sure what he’s got against a liberal, progressive, diverse, successful city like London.” A HISTORY OF PUBLIC ATTACKS Trump and Khan — who topped the same influence list himself in 2017 — have traded barbs regularly since the center-left Labour politician won office in 2016, becoming the first Muslim mayor of a Western capital.  Born in London to parents who moved to Britain from Pakistan in the 1960s, Khan, 55, attended school and studied law in the U.K. capital, and served as a transport minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour government.  The U.S. president most recently attacked Khan during his United Nations speech in September, alleging without evidence that London wants “to go to Sharia law” under Khan. London’s mayor responded at the time by saying Trump had “shown he is racist, he is sexist, he is misogynistic and he is Islamophobic.”  Trump’s latest remarks appear to go further than his speech at the U.N. by suggesting that Khan chiefly represents people who have migrated to Britain, and further that they are at ideological odds with other Britons — a view echoed in the recent U.S. National Security Strategy document, which argued that immigration is weakening Europe.    To vote for the capital’s mayor, voters must be resident in London and either be British or Irish citizens or citizens of a defined list of countries including Commonwealth nations, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Spain who also have permission to enter or stay in the U.K. Khan won 43.8 percent of the vote in his most recent election, compared to 32.7 percent for his Conservative rival. A FORMAL STRATEGY Trump’s virulent rhetoric echoes that in the National Security Strategy, published last Thursday, which said European countries face “civilizational erasure” due to migration policies, “censorship of free speech,” falling birth rates and “loss of national identities and self-confidence.” During his interview with POLITICO, the U.S. president branded Europe’s political leaders “weak” and signaled that he would endorse candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent.  Asked whether some European nations would no longer be allies of the U.S., Trump replied: “It depends. They’ll change their ideology, obviously, because the people coming in have a totally different ideology … they’ll be much weaker, and they’ll be much different.” Khan said “record numbers of Americans are flocking” to London “and I suspect it’s because we are the antithesis of everything President Trump believes in, in terms of nativism, in terms of populism, in terms of unilateralism — we’re the exact opposite.”  He added: “I’m very comfortable, as a Londoner, having friends who are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh. I think diversity is a strength, not a weakness. It makes us richer, not poorer; stronger, not weaker. And it’s for President Trump to explain what he’s got against that.” 

LONDON — The British government pushed back on Tuesday against Donald Trump’s assertion that European nations spend too much time discussing the war in Ukraine without reaching a resolution. The U.S. president told POLITICO’s Dasha Burns in a Monday interview for a special episode of The Conversation that European leaders “talk too much” about the conflict and have failed to help end the war.   “They’re not producing,” Trump said. “We’re talking about Ukraine. They talk but they don’t produce. And the war just keeps going on and on.” POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.  Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesperson challenged Trump’s framing of the Ukraine peace negotiations, which have entered a pivotal moment almost four years after Russia’s full-scale invasion. “I would reject that,” the spokesperson said. “You’ve seen the number of countries involved in the Coalition of the Willing discussions. You would also see the work that the U.K. has done in terms of leading the response on sanctions, including against the shadow fleet [carrying embargoed Russian goods].” However, they confirmed that British support for the U.S.-led peace plan for Ukraine remained strong, and welcomed “the significant U.S. efforts to bring about peace to Ukraine, which no one wants more than President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.” Washington has held separate talks with both Moscow and Kyiv, neither of which has yielded an outcome that satisfies both sides. The spokesperson also pushed back against the U.S. president’s desciption of the continent as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people. “You’ve seen the strong relationship between the prime minister and the president,” they said, noting that the U.S.-U.K. trade deal signed earlier this year was about “securing and protecting and creating jobs.” The spokesperson also referenced the unity of the E3 nations (Britain, Germany and France) in speaking with Zelenskyy at Downing Street on Monday: “We will continue to put our shoulder to the wheel in order to strengthen Ukraine’s position, in order to bring this barbaric war to an end.” Starmer will meet U.S. Ambassador to the U.K. Warren Stephens at Downing Street on Tuesday afternoon for a previously scheduled appointment. MIDDLE GROUND Trump also hit out against left-wing London Mayor Sadiq Khan, claiming the city’s first Muslim mayor had only been elected “because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” Downing Street did not challenge that assertion: “The prime minister has a strong relationship with the U.S. president and a strong relationship with the mayor of London and on both is committed to working together in order to deliver stronger outcomes for the British people.” But the U.S. president’s comments drew some criticism from Labour MPs. “Strength is the ability to work with others and bring them along with you, to listen and to make friends,” argued Emily Thornberry, who chairs Britain’s Foreign Affairs Committee. “It’s not strong to try to push other people around.” A backbench Labour MP, granted anonymity to speak candidly, admitted it was “hard to remain calm when you read Trump when he’s in full flow.” The MP added that the U.K. government should “be absolutely unapologetic and fearless when making our views known.” “It’s clear Trump sees [Russian President Vladimir] Putin as an ally in subduing Europe and we can’t allow that to happen.” A third Labour MP was dismissive of Trump’s stance on European politics: “So he’s allowed to interfere with our politics, but God forbid I do a bit of door-knocking for Kamala Harris.” Esther Webber contributed to this report.

This article is also available in French and German. President Donald Trump denounced Europe as a “decaying” group of nations led by “weak” people in an interview with POLITICO, belittling the traditional U.S. allies for failing to control migration and end the Russia-Ukraine war, and signaling that he would endorse European political candidates aligned with his own vision for the continent. The broadside attack against European political leadership represents the president’s most virulent denunciation to date of these Western democracies, threatening a decisive rupture with countries like France and Germany that already have deeply strained relations with the Trump administration. “I think they’re weak,” Trump said of Europe’s political leaders. “But I also think that they want to be so politically correct.” “I think they don’t know what to do,” he added. “Europe doesn’t know what to do.” Trump matched that blunt, even abrasive, candor on European affairs with a sequence of stark pronouncements on matters closer to home: He said he would make support for immediately slashing interest rates a litmus test in his choice of a new Federal Reserve chair. He said he could extend anti-drug military operations to Mexico and Colombia. And Trump urged conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, both in their 70s, to stay on the bench. Trump’s comments about Europe come at an especially precarious moment in the negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, as European leaders express intensifying alarm that Trump may abandon Ukraine and its continental allies to Russian aggression. In the interview, Trump offered no reassurance to Europeans on that score and declared that Russia was obviously in a stronger position than Ukraine. Trump spoke on Monday at the White House with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns for a special episode of The Conversation. POLITICO on Tuesday named Trump the most influential figure shaping European politics in the year ahead, a recognition previously conferred on leaders including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Trump’s confident commentary on Europe presented a sharp contrast with some of his remarks on domestic matters in the interview. The president and his party have faced a series of electoral setbacks and spiraling dysfunction in Congress this fall as voters rebel against the high cost of living. Trump has struggled to deliver a message to meet that new reality: In the interview, he graded the economy’s performance as an “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus,” insisted that prices were falling across the board and declined to outline a specific remedy for imminent spikes in health care premiums. Even amid growing turbulence at home, however, Trump remains a singular figure in international politics. In recent days, European capitals have shuddered with dismay at the release of Trump’s new National Security Strategy document, a highly provocative manifesto that cast the Trump administration in opposition to the mainstream European political establishment and vowed to “cultivate resistance” to the European status quo on immigration and other politically volatile issues. In the interview, Trump amplified that worldview, describing cities like London and Paris as creaking under the burden of migration from the Middle East and Africa. Without a change in border policy, Trump said, some European states “will not be viable countries any longer.” Using highly incendiary language, Trump singled out London’s left-wing mayor, Sadiq Khan, the son of Pakistani immigrants and the city’s first Muslim mayor, as a “disaster” and blamed his election on immigration: “He gets elected because so many people have come in. They vote for him now.” The president of the European Council, António Costa, on Monday rebuked the Trump administration for the national security document and urged the White House to respect Europe’s sovereignty and right to self-government. “Allies do not threaten to interfere in the democratic life or the domestic political choices of these allies,” Costa said. “They respect them.” Speaking with POLITICO, Trump flouted those boundaries and said he would continue to back favorite candidates in European elections, even at the risk of offending local sensitivities. “I’d endorse,” Trump said. “I’ve endorsed people, but I’ve endorsed people that a lot of Europeans don’t like. I’ve endorsed Viktor Orbán,” the hard-right Hungarian prime minister Trump said he admired for his border-control policies. It was the Russia-Ukraine war, rather than electoral politics, that Trump appeared most immediately focused on. He claimed on Monday that he had offered a new draft of a peace plan that some Ukrainian officials liked, but that Zelenskyy himself had not reviewed yet. “It would be nice if he would read it,” Trump said. Zelenskyy met with leaders of France, Germany and the United Kingdom on Monday and continued to voice opposition to ceding Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of a peace deal. The president said he put little stock in the role of European leaders in seeking to end the war: “They talk, but they don’t produce, and the war just keeps going on and on.” In a fresh challenge to Zelenskyy, who appears politically weakened in Ukraine due to a corruption scandal, Trump renewed his call for Ukraine to hold new elections. “They haven’t had an election in a long time,” Trump said. “You know, they talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” Latin America Even as he said he is pursuing a peace agenda overseas, Trump said he might further broaden the military actions his administration has taken in Latin America against targets it claims are linked to the drug trade. Trump has deployed a massive military force to the Caribbean to strike alleged drug runners and pressure the authoritarian regime in Venezuela. In the interview, Trump repeatedly declined to rule out putting American troops into Venezuela as part of an effort to bring down the strongman ruler Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump blames for exporting drugs and dangerous people to the United States. Some leaders on the American right have warned Trump that a ground invasion of Venezuela would be a red line for conservatives who voted for him in part to end foreign wars. “I don’t want to rule in or out. I don’t talk about it,” Trump said of deploying ground troops, adding: “I don’t want to talk to you about military strategy.” But the president said he would consider using force against targets in other countries where the drug trade is highly active, including Mexico and Colombia. “Sure, I would,” he said. Trump scarcely defended some of his most controversial actions in Latin America, including his recent pardon of the former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a decades-long sentence in an American prison after being convicted in a massive drug-trafficking conspiracy. Trump said he knew “very little” about Hernández except that he’d been told by “very good people” that the former Honduran president had been targeted unfairly by political opponents. “They asked me to do it and I said, I’ll do it,” Trump acknowledged, without naming the people who sought the pardon for Hernández. HEALTH CARE AND THE ECONOMY Asked to grade the economy under his watch, Trump rated it an overwhelming success: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.” To the extent voters are frustrated about prices, Trump said the Biden administration was at fault: “I inherited a mess. I inherited a total mess.” The president is facing a forbidding political environment because of voters’ struggles with affordability, with about half of voters overall and nearly 4 in 10 people who voted for Trump in 2024 saying in a recent POLITICO Poll that the cost of living was as bad as it had ever been in their lives. Trump said he could make additional changes to tariff policy to help lower the price of some goods, as he has already done, but he insisted overall that the trend on costs was in the right direction. “Prices are all coming down,” Trump said, adding: “Everything is coming down.” Prices rose 3 percent over the 12 months ending in September, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index. Trump’s political struggles are shadowing his upcoming decision on a nominee to chair the Federal Reserve, a post that will shape the economic environment for the balance of Trump’s term. Asked if he was making support for slashing interest rates a litmus test for his Fed nominee, Trump answered with a quick “yes.” The most immediate threat to the cost of living for many Americans is the expiration of enhanced health insurance subsidies for Obamacare exchange plans that were enacted by Democrats under former President Joe Biden and are set to expire at the end of this year. Health insurance premiums are expected to spike in 2026, and medical charities are already experiencing a marked rise in requests for aid even before subsidies expire. Trump has been largely absent from health policy negotiations in Washington, while Democrats and some Republicans supportive of a compromise on subsidies have run into a wall of opposition on the right. Reaching a deal — and marshaling support from enough Republicans to pass it — would likely require direct intervention from the president. Yet asked if he would support a temporary extension of Obamacare subsidies while he works out a large-scale plan with lawmakers, Trump was noncommittal. “I don’t know. I’m gonna have to see,” he said, pivoting to an attack on Democrats for being too generous with insurance companies in the Affordable Care Act. A cloud of uncertainty surrounds the administration’s intentions on health care policy. In late November, the White House planned to unveil a proposal to temporarily extend Obamacare subsidies only to postpone the announcement. Trump has promised on and off for years to unveil a comprehensive plan for replacing Obamacare but has never done so. That did not change in the interview. “I want to give the people better health insurance for less money,” Trump said. “The people will get the money, and they’re going to buy the health insurance that they want.” Reminded that Americans are currently buying holiday gifts and drawing up household budgets for 2026 amid uncertainty around premiums, Trump shot back: “Don’t be dramatic. Don’t be dramatic.” SUPREME COURT Large swaths of Trump’s domestic agenda currently sit before the Supreme Court, with a generally sympathetic 6-3 conservative majority that has nevertheless thrown up some obstacles to the most brazen versions of executive power Trump has attempted to wield. Trump spoke with POLITICO several days after the high court agreed to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of birthright citizenship, the automatic conferral of citizenship on people born in the United States. Trump is attempting to roll back that right and said it would be “devastating” if the court blocked him from doing so. If the court rules in his favor, Trump said, he had not yet considered whether he would try to strip citizenship from people who were born as citizens under current law. Trump broke with some members of his party who have been hoping that the court’s two oldest conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, might consider retiring before the midterm elections so that Trump can nominate another conservative while Republicans are guaranteed to control the Senate. The president said he’d rather Alito, 75, and Thomas, 77, the court’s most reliable conservative jurists, remain in place: “I hope they stay,” he said, “’cause I think they’re fantastic.”

LONDON — Nigel Farage wants to use Britain’s next election to hammer the government on law and order. That’s got ministers scrambling to mount a fightback. The Reform UK leader — who has already made a running on the hot-button issue of immigration — has warned that parts of Britain are facing “societal collapse.”  His right-wing populist party has been pushing the slogan “Britain is Lawless” — and now the U.K. government is planning a series of announcements to prove Farage wrong. It’s a tough ask for a government that’s trailing Farage in the polls and is presiding over public services in a state of disarray. In the coming weeks, ministers will pitch a blueprint for a major police reform as one answer to tackling street crime. Labour MPs are already sending out leaflets to constituents highlighting details of their named neighborhood police officer. The government is “making sure our streets are policed, which is something the previous government just failed to do,” Policing Minister Sarah Jones argues on this week’s POLITICO Westminster Insider podcast. Jones said the shake-up will “make sure the police are doing the things that we need them to be doing.” Farage’s claims of lawlessness can prompt an exasperated response from ministers and officials who point to statistics. | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Prime Minister Keir Starmer has meanwhile put Shabana Mahmood, who dealt directly with shoplifters while working in her parents’ corner shop, in charge of delivering the message as home secretary. “I think she is absolutely the right person for this job, and I hope she’s really, really tough on it, because of her own background with her mum and dad running a shop,” said Labour peer and former political adviser Ayesha Hazarika. PERCEPTIONS MATTER Farage’s claims of lawlessness can prompt an exasperated response from ministers and officials who point to statistics, such as the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which suggest crime has broadly been falling for decades. In September, London Mayor Sadiq Khan hit back at politicians “spreading misinformation” about safety in London, highlighting data showing a fall in violent crime in the capital. That came after U.S. President Donald Trump, an ally of Farage, said “crime in London is through the roof.” But MPs — and ministers too — caution against being dismissive of voters’ lived experience. The narrative that crime is going down in London “infuriates my constituents,” said Margaret Mullane, the Labour MP for Dagenham and Rainham, part of Greater London.  “It’s the personal experience, isn’t it? So if you hear that, you’ll think: Well that’s not my experience when I’m going in and out of work, or I’m popping up to Tesco, not that late in the evening, and I don’t feel safe.” Hazarika, who has spoken about the issue in the House of Lords, said: “I think it is a real issue, and I do think it’s contributing to people really feeling like the country is broken when they see so much antisocial behavior.” Hazarika’s parliamentary interventions have been informed by her own experience in Brixton, where she is part of a community group called Action on Anti-Social Behavior. The group was set up because of local concerns that included rife drug-taking, people defecating in public, violence against shopworkers and brazen shoplifting.  While rejecting Farage’s “lawless” characterization, Jones accepts there is work to be done. “It is undoubtedly the case that there is a bit of a mismatch on some of the perceptions versus the reality, but I think if you walk through the streets and you see rubbish in the streets, you can smell cannabis, you talk to a shopkeeper who’s just had somebody steal something, your bike gets stolen and the police don’t come and talk to you about it, of course that’s not right, and we need to fix all of those things,” she said.  DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE “There will be a steady drumbeat of stuff coming up,” said one government official involved in discussions about the strategy, who was not authorized to speak on the record. “We’ve got to make a really persuasive case about the work that is going on to combat [street crime].”  Reform UK can “whinge all they want,” the official said. “We’re focused on governing and getting our heads down and really trying to solve this problem, as opposed to shouting from the sidelines.” The upcoming announcements are likely to be focused on police reform — not on big spending. | George Wood/Getty Images But the upcoming announcements are likely to be focused on police reform — not on big spending. Police chiefs warned in June that their funding settlement from the Treasury would not be enough to fund the government’s ambitions. Instead, there’s been reallocation. The government has already announced plans to ax directly elected police and crime commissioners — who have spent the past decade setting budgets, appointing chief constables and producing policing plans, but with limited democratic take-up. That role will be transferred to existing mayors or council leaders in a bid to “cut the cost of unnecessary bureaucracy” and invest back in the front lines. Alastair Greig, research analyst for the Organised Crime and Policing Team (OCP) at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said it was important to recognize the “prioritization and the policy decisions that are involved if police decide to really meaningfully crack down on this street crime.“ “People that are pushing the narrative of British lawlessness and pointing to these low-level crimes need to be aware that if their proposals are acted on, then we may well see increases in other forms of serious and violent crime,” he warned. Still, ministers believe reordering police priorities can really start to alter public perceptions. “By reforming policing so that our police can focus on those physical crimes, respond to people, not necessarily always solve the crime, but keep people informed, tell them what they’re doing and let them know, then I think people will start to feel safer,” Jones argued. With Farage breathing down their necks, ministers need all the help they can get.

LONDON — European officials congratulated themselves on Monday after talks in Geneva suggested Donald Trump will listen to their concerns about forcing a bad peace deal on Ukraine.  “While work remains to be done, there is now a solid basis for moving forward,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said as she hailed “good progress” resulting from “a strong European presence” at the talks. It was certainly “progress” for top advisers from the EU and the U.K. to be invited to join Sunday’s meeting in Switzerland after they were cut out of America’s original 28-point plan, which they feared was so biased it would embolden Russia to launch further attacks.  But the celebration was short-lived.  On Monday evening, Russia rejected the updated text of the deal, which had been redrafted with input from Ukraine and its allies during the lengthy talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  The risk for Ukraine now is that Vladimir Putin will drag the American president back to his starting position: A 28-point ceasefire agreement that triggered a meltdown among officials in Brussels because it would force Kyiv to give up swathes of land to Moscow, abandon hope of ever joining NATO, and cut the size of its army to 600,000 troops from nearly 1 million.   If that happens, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will face a miserable choice: Either take the offer cooked up by Trump and Putin, or gamble his country’s future in the hope of one day getting enough help from his European friends.  These are the same friends who, after nearly four years of war, won’t send him their troops, or the weapons he wants, or even raid Russia’s frozen assets from their banks to help him buy supplies of his own.  UNWILLING TO FIGHT For some U.S. Republicans, Europeans who object to Trump’s deal and the compromises it will require are deluding themselves. “What is the alternative?” Greg Swenson, chairman of Republicans Overseas in the U.K., asked POLITICO. “You can talk a good game, you can attend all these diplomatic meetings and you can send all your best people to Geneva, but the only way to beat Putin is to fight — and none of them are willing to do that,” Swenson said. “So it’s all talk. It all sounds great when you talk about democracy and defending Ukraine, but they’re just not willing to do it.” European politicians and officials would disagree, pointing to the huge sums of money and weapons their governments have sent to Kyiv since the war started nearly four years ago, as well as to the economic challenge of cutting back on Russian trade, especially imported fossil fuels. Since the U.S. pulled back on its support, Europe has conspicuously moved to fill the gap. But in truth, Trump’s original proposal panicked officials and diplomats in Brussels and beyond because they knew Zelenskyy could not rely on Europe to do enough to help Ukraine on its own.  European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said as she hailed “good progress” resulting from “a strong European presence” at the talks. | Nicolas Economou/Getty Images A month ago, EU leaders turned up for a summit in Brussels bullishly predicting they would secure a landmark agreement on using €140 billion in frozen Russian assets as a “reparations loan” to put Kyiv on a secure financial footing for at least the next two years. But in a major diplomatic and political blunder, the plan has fallen apart amid unexpected objections from Belgium.  NO BREAKTHROUGH ON ASSETS Talks are now intensifying among officials in the European Commission and EU governments, especially the Belgians, but there has as yet been no breakthrough, according to multiple officials granted anonymity, like others, to speak candidly about sensitive matters.  Some diplomats hope that the pressure from Trump will force Belgium and those other EU countries with reservations on the frozen assets plan to get on board. One idea that hasn’t been ruled out is to make use of some of the assets alongside joint EU bonds or potentially direct financial contributions from EU governments, officials said.  But some EU diplomats fear the whole idea of a reparations loan to Ukraine using the frozen assets will crumble if the final peace blueprint contains a reference to using those same funds.  The initial blueprint suggested using the assets in an investment drive in Ukraine, with half the proceeds going to the U.S., a concept Europeans rejected as “scandalous.” Yet once sanctions on Russia are eventually lifted, Euroclear — the Belgium-based financial depository holding the immobilized assets — could end up having to wire the money back to Moscow.  This could leave EU taxpayers on the hook to repay the cash, a scenario that is likely to weigh heavily on EU governments as they consider whether to support the loan idea in the weeks ahead.  Then there’s the question of keeping the peace. Earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer led efforts to assemble support for an international peacekeeping force from volunteer countries who would form a “coalition of the willing.” A year earlier, Macron even floated the idea of “boots on the ground” before the conflict is over.  He no longer talks like that.  In a sign of how difficult any conversation on sending troops to Ukraine would be in France, an impassioned call last week from France’s new top general, Fabien Mandon, for mayors to prepare citizens for a possible war with Russia sparked an uproar, and drew condemnation from major political parties. Mandon had warned that if France “is not prepared to accept losing its children, to suffer economically because priorities will be given to defense production, then we are at risk.” Macron tried to tamp down the controversy and said Mandon’s words had been taken out of context. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer led efforts to assemble support for an international peacekeeping force. | Leon Neal/Getty Images In Germany, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin was “already making a special contribution to the eastern flank” by stationing a combat-ready brigade in Lithuania. “The entire Baltic region is a key area on which the Bundeswehr will focus. I think that this is also sufficient and far-reaching support for Ukraine.” The Ukrainians would have wanted a deeper commitment on their soil, but Western Europeans are wary of incurring high casualties by sending soldiers to the front lines. “At least Trump is honest about it,” Swenson said. “We could beat Russia. We would beat them, I would think, quickly, assuming there was no nuclear weapons.” “We would beat Russia, but a lot of people would die.” Esther Webber, Gabriel Gavin and Nicholas Vinocur contributed reporting.

VENICE, Italy — Luca Zaia, a towering force in northern Italian politics, is plotting his next move and that’s turning into a headache for his party, the far-right League, led by firebrand Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. As regional president of Veneto, the wealthy region of 5 million people around Venice, Zaia is one of the League’s superstars, but his mandate comes to an end after an election this weekend. That is sparking intense speculation about his ambitions — not least because his political vision is so different from Salvini’s. While Salvini is steering the League away from its separatist roots — no longer seeking to rip the rich industrialized north away from poorer southern Italy — Zaia remains a vocal advocate for northern autonomy from Rome. He is also more moderate on immigration, climate and LGBTQ+ rights than his right-wing populist party chief. One of the big questions looming over Italian politics is whether these two rival visions can survive within the League, a party at the heart of Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government. Zaia himself suggests the League could split into two allied factions along the lines of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union on Germany’s center right.   MEET THE DOGE Nicknamed the “Doge of Venice,” Zaia, a former Italian agriculture minister, has spent 15 of his 57 years running Veneto from an office lined with emerald silk in a 16th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal. He won eight out of 10 votes cast in 2020, the highest approval rating of any regional chief, but is barred from running again because of a two-term limit. In an interview with POLITICO, he joked about the whirl of theories about his next steps. “I am in the running for everything: [energy giant] ENI, Venice, parliament, minister.” But when pressed on what he will do, he gave nothing away, only that his focus is squarely on the north. “I gave up a safe seat in Brussels a year ago to stay here,” he said, only adding he would work until the last day of his mandate. “Then I’ll see.” Amid internal power struggles in the League, Zaia is increasingly seen as an alternative leadership figure by those unhappy with its trajectory.  Zaia has clashed with Salvini’s deputy leader Gen. Roberto Vannacci over his revisionist views of the fascist era under Benito Mussolini, but has held back from criticizing Salvini openly. Zaia, right, at the closing event of the center-right coalition’s campaign for the Veneto regional elections in support of Alberto Stefani, left, Nov. 18. | Alessandro Bremec/NurPhoto via Getty Images When asked whether Salvini made strategic mistakes as party leader, he stayed cryptically diplomatic. “We all make mistakes,” he replied. A CHANGING LEAGUE When Zaia joined what was then the Northern League in the 1990s it was a separatist movement, opposed to tax redistribution from the wealthy north to the south, perceived as corrupt and inefficient. But under Salvini’s leadership, the rebranded League became a nationwide party, with a strand increasingly courting the extreme right. This approach has alienated both mainstream voters, and more moderate and north-focused activists, for whom Zaia is a political lodestar. One major bugbear is Salvini’s drive to build a €14 billion bridge between Calabria and Sicily, seen by separatists as a wasteful southern project sucking in northern tax revenue. In a sign of the shifting tectonic plates, one faction, supported by the Northern League’s founder Umberto Bossi, and that has in recent years unsuccessfully tried to oust Salvini, last week launched a new party, the Pact for the North. Its leader, former MP Paolo Grimoldi, expelled from the League after 34 years, told POLITICO his group would welcome Zaia “with open arms.”  Zaia and other northern governors “just have to find the courage to say publicly what they have been saying privately for some time, that Salvini has completely betrayed the battles of the League.” Zaia himself is recommending a new-look League modeled on the German CDU-CSU, with sister League parties catering to Italy’s north and south. He aired the idea in a new book by journalist Bruno Vespa, pointing out the CSU had a separate Bavarian identity within the German Christian Democrat family. “We could do the same here,” he said. Most political insiders and observers think it unlikely that Zaia would seek a national leadership role — being too associated with Veneto — but he would be an obvious choice to lead the northern wing of a divided party. For Salvini, this internal schism is an obvious challenge. He has said he’s intrigued by the CDU-CSU idea, but few believe him. He needs to find something to prevent Zaia from turning into a nuisance, and has proposed him for a vacant parliamentary seat in Rome and as mayor of Venice. “It’s up to him to decide if he stays in Veneto or brings Veneto to Rome,” Salvini said at an event in Padua last weekend. MAYOR OF VENICE? Which way will Zaia jump? A return to Rome seems unappetizing. “When he was minister, he didn’t like Rome”, said a political colleague. “Rome’s values are not the values of Veneto.  In Veneto, we value meritocracy, work, effort, seriousness in politics. In Rome it’s all compromise.” Which makes Venice the more likely option, if he does decide to avoid a head-on clash with Salvini. Zaia would be very well set to run for mayor of Venice next May, according to the MP and two friends of Zaia’s from Veneto. He has a manifesto ready: Autonomy for Venice. Venice should become a city-state with special powers to address its unique problems of depopulation, overtourism and climate change, he said in the interview. Zaia’s popularity in Veneto, according to the locals, derives from his down-to-earth persona. He’s better known for speaking in regional dialect and attending traditional events, rather than being snapped at glamorous galas or on the fleet of speedboats at his disposal, rocking gently at his Grand Canal doorstep.   He was also lauded for his handling of the Covid pandemic, readying Veneto for the Winter Olympics next year and even helping boost exports of Prosecco sparkling wine. Local lore holds that half of Veneto’s 5 million residents have his phone number. “Maybe even more,” he quipped. “I have never changed my number, people know they can call me if they have a serious problem.” DISCO DOGE Raised in a small village near Treviso, just 30 kilometers from Venice, he was an unusually independent and motivated teenager, passionate about horses and teaching himself Latin on Sundays, according to one classmate. At university, where he graduated in animal husbandry, he supported himself by running club nights in local discos. It was a useful training for politics, Zaia said. “Clubs are a great school of life. You meet humanity in all its forms: rich, poor, good, bad, violent, peaceful.” One of the big questions looming over Italian politics is whether these two rival visions can survive within the League, a party at the heart of Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government. | Ivan Romano/Getty Images Indeed, it seems he took the role ultraseriously. “I never saw Luca dance. For him it was work,” said the same former classmate. He entered politics in the aftermath of the 1990s Clean Hands scandal, a nationwide corruption investigation, which took down a generation of politicians, and became a rising star in the region. As well as being the youngest provincial president in Italy, adorning Treviso with numerous surprisingly popular roundabouts, he was minister of agriculture in Silvio Berlusconi’s government. He is sufficiently self-assured to diverge from central League dogma when he sees fit. He tried to bring in a law this year to regulate doctor-assisted suicide in contrast to national League policy. He also supports sex education in schools, something the League opposes. “When it’s an ethical matter … I  have my own ideas, regardless of what the party says,” he said. But he is clearly smarting about the party’s deal with Meloni to keep the Zaia brand out of the campaign for this weekend’s Veneto election. The original plan, which would have given him significant ongoing influence in the region, was for him to choose a list of regional councilors to go on the ballot and for the League logo to feature his name, he told journalists on the sidelines of a Venice Commission event in October. “If they see me as a problem, I’ll become a real problem,” he threatened. (He will still appear on the ballot as a candidate for regional councilor, giving him yet another option — stay on to assist his successor.) If he does decide to chart his own political path as mayor of Venice next year, at least he won’t have far to go. The doge needs only to step into one of his speedboats to whizz off to the mayor’s equally opulent palazzo along the Grand Canal.

LOS ANGELES — The 2028 Olympic games is adding Team Trump to its roster. LA28, the organizing committee for the upcoming Summer Games and Paralympics in Los Angeles, posted new members of the board of directors to its website Thursday. The common thread among nearly all of the new additions is ties to President Donald Trump. The slate includes well-known political figures like Reince Priebus, the onetime Republican National Committee chair who served as Trump’s first chief of staff in his first term, and Kevin McCarthy, the former House Speaker and Trump ally who is also close with Los Angeles’ Democratic mayor, Karen Bass. Others with Trump connections are Wisconsin Trump mega-donor Diane Hendricks, Patrick Dumont, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and son-in-law of major Trump benefactor Miriam Adelson, and investment banker Ken Moelis, who was a banker for Trump in the 1990s. The influx of new additions means that access to Trump’s White House is now just one phone call away for the commission, an asset at a time when Trump has no hesitation threatening the Democratic-led cities hosting major events. Los Angeles has been a particular target of the president’s ire, including his extraordinary mobilization of the Marines this summer in response to protests against his immigration crackdown. Prior to Thursday’s new members, the board was dominated by former Olympians, Hollywood power players and sports and corporate executives, with little overt partisan branding. Elaine Chao, the former Transportation secretary during Trump’s first term who broke with the president after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, joined the board in January. With the Olympics, America’s 250th anniversary and the World Cup all taking place during Trump’s second term, international sports bodies appear to be moving in sync in their swing toward Trump. FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who has scored more Oval Office visits with Trump this year than any world leader, came to one of his meetings bearing a 24-carat gold trophy that Infantino allowed Trump to keep. FIFA went back to Tiffany & Co. to have a replica made for the team that actually won. Beyond sitting through awkward moments in the Oval Office as Trump threatens tournament co-host Mexico over cartels while taking questions from the press, Infantino has gone out of his way to create a new award, the FIFA Peace Prize, that is widely expected to be given to Trump at the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center in early December. Casey Wasserman, the chairman of the 2028 LA Olympics organizing committee, has also been solicitous of Trump. He gifted the president medals from the 1984 games in Los Angeles during an August signing ceremony establishing a federal task force for the mega-event. Trump is chair of the task force, which is meant to ensure the games are “safe, seamless and historically successful.” Also joining the LA28 board is Los Angeles business consultant Denita Willoughby and philanthropist Maria Hummer-Tuttle, while Muffy Davis, a seven-time Paralympic medalist, is leaving the board. “We are thrilled to welcome this accomplished group to the LA28 Board who will help create an unforgettable Games for athletes and fans alike,” Wasserman said in a statement.

PARIS — An impassioned call from France’s new top general for mayors to prepare their constituents for possible war with Russia was met with swift condemnation from major political parties. Speaking at an annual meeting of French mayors in Paris on Tuesday, Gen. Fabien Mandon urged local officials to prepare citizens that they may need “to accept suffering in order to protect who we are.” “We have all the knowledge, all the economic and demographic strength to deter the Moscow regime,” Mandon said. But he said that if France “is not prepared to accept losing its children, to suffer economically because priorities will be given to defense production, then we are at risk.” Parties on both fringes of the political spectrum — together representing a significant share of voters — pushed back, underscoring France’s lack of consensus on the need to prepare for war as well as diverging assessments on how much of a threat Russia poses to the French homeland. Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has run for president three times, expressed his “total disagreement” with Mandon in a post on X and said it is not Mandon’s job to “anticipate sacrifices that would result from our diplomatic failures.” He was joined by Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, who accused Mandon of “warmongering.” Mélenchon’s France Unbowed and the Communists were the only parliamentary groups to vote against a symbolic resolution last year authorizing sending military aid to Ukraine. Sébastien Chenu, a lawmaker from Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, said Wednesday in an interview with French broadcaster LCI that Mandon had “no legitimacy” to make such remarks and said he was worried that they reflected President Emmanuel Macron’s thinking. Mandon, who was appointed earlier this year to replace Gen. Thierry Burkhard as France’s top general, previously warned in his first parliament hearing last month that the French armed forces should be ready “in three or four years” for a “shock” with respect to Russia.  France Unbowed and the National Rally, who, according to recent polling, could face off in the next presidential election runoff, both want France to leave NATO’s integrated command. While France Unbowed wants Paris to leave the military alliance altogether as soon as possible, the National Rally is ready to wait until Russia’s war in Ukraine is over to do so.