Sir Keir Starmer has handled Donald Trump’s Greenland threats admirably - Jayne Dowle

In the face of Starmer’s carefully-chosen press conference diplomacy came vitriol.

“Shockingly, our “brilliant” Nato Ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the Island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US Military Base, to Mauritius, and to do so FOR NO REASON WHATSOEVER,” the President fulminated.

This tirade came, clearly in response to Starmer’s measured approach to dealing with the Greenland threat, despite the fact that Trump had praised the Chagos handover last year.

The £3.4bn deal, which cedes sovereignty over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, leases the largest, Diego Garcia, for 99 years so the joint US-UK military base there can continue to operate. The archipelago of more than 60 Indian Ocean atolls and islands has a chequered colonial past, becoming an overseas territory of the United Kingdom in 1965.

The inhabitants of Diego Garcia, the largest island, were expelled at the request of the US government in the late 1960s and 1970s so the base, strategic to the Middle East, Africa and the Indo-Pacific region, could be built.

During a joint press conference in the Oval Office in February, the President declared, “… I have a feeling it’s going to work out very well. I think we’ll be inclined to go along with your country.”

Starmer is often criticised for his lack of emotion, but he could be forgiven for smashing his fist into a Downing Street wall and uttering a string of profanities.

On Monday morning however, his deadpan lawyerish demeanour was his most useful weapon in response to Trump’s increasingly belligerent threats to take over Greenland as a key US outpost in what we must now call the ‘High North’.

You’ll have seen the letter Trump sent to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, in which the 79-year-old points out that since Norway snubbed him for the Nobel Peace Prize he’s no longer much interested in promoting world peace.

It reads less like considered communication on a grave matter from the leader of the free world, more like an angry missive from a teenager complaining they won’t do chores if they’re made to come home by midnight.

You don’t need a degree in geopolitics to understand that Trump ramping up global aggression, then underlining it with threats of abandoning peace, will only embolden Russia and China, with possible mind-blowing consequences.

However, treading extremely carefully through the minefield of Trump's plan to impose tariffs on European countries unwilling to roll over and agree to his plan to own Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, Starmer managed to pull it off.

Mindful of what can happen if a world leader bites back - who can forget that horrendous Oval Office encounter between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy the day after Starmer’s visit last February? – he chose his words very carefully.

Indeed, they could not have been more different from Trump’s letter, littered as it was with angry capital letters and exclamation marks.

There should be “calm discussion” between “mature allies” rather than military action or a trade war, Starmer said, pointing out that friendly nations could disagree and that “being pragmatic doesn’t mean being passive”.

Faced with this latest Trump tirade, what does the former Director of Public Prosecutions say now?

Speaking on Sky News, Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, insisted his boss was keeping calm about the criticism, pointing out the deal has been done with the Mauritian government, legislated for and the treaty signed as the way in which to secure the military base for the next 100 years.

With Trump incandescent, we can only imagine what our Prime Minister might have to deal with next.