War plans were leaked to the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic magazine in a Signal messaging app chat – but the UK Government hasn’t strongly condemned the glaring security lapse
Keir Starmer needs to distance himself from Donald Trump as reverberations from the Signal messaging app scandal could soon be felt across the pond, one expert believes. The Atlantic magazine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg was minding his own business when he received an invite into a Signal messaging chat where Trump’s band of enablers were discussing a strike on the Houthi rebels in Yemen.
After using playful emojis to talk about razing their hideouts to the ground, the group turned on America’s supposed allies in Europe. According to Professor Anthony Glees, a renowned defence expert, this situation is “getting increasingly perilous for Starmer who’s walking a tightrope, with no safety net”.
While most of the world was abhorred by the group’s blatant slandering of its allies, this week one UK minister seemed to agree that Europe, as in the European Union, was a “pathetic freeloader”. While admitting the US Administration had “screwed up” in the leak, he said that the Americans have “got a case” for the EU needing to do more to fund their own defence and security. The party line appears to be one of “high confidence” that the US’s operational security measures “remain intact”, according to Deputy PM Angela Rayner.
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Professor Glees believes Starmer is “determined to stay close to Trump at all costs, even though Trump and his bunch of inexperienced amateurs are shown to hold us in utter contempt”.
He adds the parties involved need to issue a “full apology” for the Europe comments, a “climb down” and “Hegseth to get back to being a Fox News jock”.
During the chat, Vice President JD Vance said: “I am not sure the President is aware how inconsistent this [the attack] is with his message on Europe right now, there is a strong argument for delaying this for one month”.
Professor Glees said that Trump and his cronies believe the attacks on the Houthis were a “measure to keep the Suez Canal open”, which would be a “benefit to the Europeans (including our good selves here in the UK)”.
The Suez Canal in the Red Sea is a vital waterway for global trade, with 30 to 40 per cent of European trade – including oil and gas – passing through. Meanwhile, only three per cent of US trade uses the waterway.
His statement to “delay things for a month” would have been a method of putting additional stress on supposed allies.
“So here we have the US president actually wanting to damage us and our European allies. He’s the very guy who ought to be helping us, not harming us,” Professor Glees said.
The professor believes Trump agrees with Tucker Carlson’s characterisation of Europeans as “arrogant” and blasting their militaries as “smaller than the US Marine Corps”.
“With friends like this, who needs enemies?,” he added.
“Where the impact is truly significant and indeed dramatic is on us here in the UK and in Europe but also, of course, in Russia,” the professor said.
“We can see with his ongoing attacks on Ukraine and his reluctance to agree to what was intended by Trump to be an immediate and unconditional ceasefire, leading then to a proper peace, Putin is clearly exploiting to the full Trump’s inability to run his government.”