Keir Starmer issued a statement following his conference (Image: GB News)
presenter Dawn Neesom did not hold back as she hit out at Sir for only providing “sound bites” following his conference with 25 world leaders. The Prime Minister held a “coalition of the willing” to push forward facilitating peace between and as he said “sooner or later” Putin needs to come to the table.
As she took the studio over to Downing Street, she introduced political correspondent Katherine Forster and said: “Katherine, we heard a lot of words there, I’m not entirely sure many of us understood what was being said there though.”
Katherine broke down Starmer’s words, saying the PM made it very clear that the buck stopped with Putin, adding that the “yes, but” attitude from “simply isn’t good enough”.
Dawn then said “Katherine, press conferences are notorious for when people just don’t answer questions, a lot of the valid questions journalists asked simply weren’t answered. Were you frustrated about the response you weren’t getting?” Katherine replied: “It is a bit frustrating to be honest with you,” but then defended Starmer as she admitted he wouldn’t be able to share too much as it would be in an announcement.
Dawn Neesom was not impressed with Starmer’s conference (Image: GB News)
As the link returned to the studio, Dawn asked the panel: “You heard what Katherine said, I was just so frustrated with that press conference, I heard a lot of words like military and boots on the ground, it’s sound bites, I just didn’t understand what any of it meant in reality.”
International security expert Henry Bolton said: “Maybe I could try and rewrite the Prime Minister’s words a little bit. What he could have said was ‘I’ve just had a meeting with 25 countries, and we’ve all agreed in principle that should the parties to this conflict agree to a ceasefire but require some sort of confidence building measure on the ground and should that require some sort of military presence, we would in principle be prepared to contribute to facilitate that role.”
He continued: “Nothing is going to happen unless there is a peace agreement, and that includes Russian agreement. It worries me that he is talking about military momentum, he has diplomatic momentum in terms of building pressure on the Kremlin, but there is not military momentum. There is clearly a political decision to spin up the military staff to start thinking about the what ifs.
Dawn then chimed in to swipe: “Brilliant, why didn’t he say that?”