Liam Fox tells Iain Dale what he'd like to say to Donald Trump

1 December 2019, 15:03

Iain Dale wanted to know whether it would be welcomed by Dr Liam Fox if President Trump intervened in the election in his upcoming UK visit.

Iain Dale asked: You're big Atlanticist and you go to Washington quite a lot.

If Donald Trump rang you up tomorrow and said, 'Liam, I need some advice. I want to give Boris Johnson my full support when I speak at this press conference on Wednesday, and I want to explain to the British people the dangers of Jeremy Corbyn' - what would your advice to him be?"

Liam Fox responded: "I would say, Mr. President, that we should be warning of the dangers at a time when Russia is increasingly aggressive, at a time when North Korea is building nuclear weapons, when Iran wants to develop nuclear weapons, I would be warning the Alliance about the danger of abolishing our nuclear deterrent.

"And we all know in the United Kingdom that both Jeremy Corbyn and his his tartan ally Nicola Sturgeon want to see the abandonment of Britain's nuclear deterrent. Here we go back to, as you mentioned earlier, this wider historical debate.

I thought we had won the debate about one sided disarmament in a dangerous world and it seems that from the hard left either in the Labour Party or in Scotland, the SNP, they still want one-sided disarmament in a very dangerous world."

Iain Dale pressed him and asked whether he would urge him to stay out of the election.

Fox replied: "I think that, you know, it doesn't help politicians involving themselves in party level in other national elections, but there are clearly issues, nuclear deterrent being one of them, that are important to the United States."