Ed Miliband has been slammed after being confronted today with his old tweets describing President-elect Donald Trump as a “racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper”.
The former Labour leader appeared on BBC Breakfast this morning, speaking from the Cop29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, where host Jon Kay questioned him on working with Trump on climate change.
Kay asked the Doncaster MP and Government minister: “How do you build a relationship with a man who you described in the past as a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper?”
Shrugging off his inflammatory tweet from 2016, Milliband said: “Look, you know, I said things in the past. My job now, as a Government minister, is to work with the new US administration.”
Ed Milliband branded Trump a ‘racist, misogynistic and self-confessed groper’ in old tweets
PA
He added: “Donald Trump’s done lots of tweets in his time as well. I think what he will be interested in is serving a mandate from the American people.
“What we’re interested in is serving the mandate from the British people, and the British people have elected us to drive forward with this clean energy transition.”
When asked whether he would have published those posts had he known he would one day be dealing with a Trump administration on climate, Miliband said: “Honestly, I think they’re irrelevant.”
“I genuinely don’t think that Donald Trump is reading my tweets. I don’t have such a high opinion of myself.”
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Milliband said his old Trump tweets are “irrelevant”
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Miliband is the latest Labour minister to be in the spotlight for past comments on Trump.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy – then a Labour backbencher – once called Trump “deluded, dishonest, xenophobic, narcissistic,” adding that he was “no friend of Britain”.
Lammy has said the remarks were “old news” and you would “struggle to find any politician” who had not said some “pretty ripe things” about Trump in the past.
“In that period, particularly with people on Twitter, lots of things were said about Donald Trump,” he added.
“I think that what you say as a backbencher and what you do wearing the real duty of public office are two different things.
“And I am Foreign Secretary. There are things I know now that I didn’t know back then.”