Trump’s visit should still go ahead, for now - Alex Cole-Hamilton

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky with Donald Trump and JD Vance in the Oval Office

In a premeditated act of thuggery, Vice President Vance and President Trump tried to humiliate one of the bravest leaders of our time as the world watched on.

President Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine are heroes. They deserve a fair and lasting peace, with the steadfast support of the free world.

Now, I think I have a firm sense of where the right side of history is in all of this - I’m officially sanctioned by the Kremlin and I used some holiday to campaign against Trump in Pennsylvania.

But the offer of a state visit should stand, at least for now. It may be most significant leverage we have to influence Trump’s thinking on Ukraine and America’s place in the Western Alliance.

It’s clear from Friday’s Oval Office bin-fire that Trump sees all of this as some kind of game. He kept going on about Ukraine’s lack of cards. Well to torture the metaphor still further, right now the UK is still at the card table and in our hand we hold a king. And it’s a visit with King Charles that Trump desperately wants. Put simply, where we have any kind of leverage to influence American thinking right now, we should use it with all our might.

As I write this, the western alliance appears to be unravelling at a ferocious speed, with brutal tariffs applied to Canada and Mexico overnight and the unforgivable suspension of military aid by the US to the armed forces of Ukraine. All of this underscores the unbelievable fact that - and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this - America is no longer a reliable ally or a trustworthy international broker.

The UK must lead by example, support Ukraine and boost our collective security. It means identifying practical steps that aid the efforts being led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It’s why Liberal Democrats are calling for the UK Government to seize the tens of billions of pounds worth of frozen Russian assets and use them to support Ukraine’s fight for survival. There is £25 billion being held in the UK alone that could be utilised if there was fast-track legislation. Europe too must seize frozen Russian assets to resist Putin’s unjust and savage war. The Prime Minister has announced that he would be open to UK troops being used in a peacekeeping mission following any potential end to the war as part of a Ukrainian security guarantee. A top priority for increased defence spending must therefore be reversing the Conservatives’ reckless troop cuts that have left the British army at its smallest size since Napoleon.

These are days of crisis for our world. As such we have to use every opportunity that we have to keep America committed to a just and lasting peace for Ukraine and to the alliance that has underwritten 80 years of our security.

There may come a day when the offer of that visit needs to be withdrawn but for now it’s a vital tool of soft power diplomacy.

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader and Edinburgh Western Constituency