Albanese gets the thumbs-up from Trump as PM’s attention turns to AUKUS, Gaza

London: The White House has released a photo of US President Donald Trump giving a thumbs-up and smiling broadly as he stood beside Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during their recent New York encounter.

Albanese met Trump at a cocktail event the US president hosted on Tuesday night in Manhattan (Wednesday morning Australian time), which was attended by more than 100 world leaders.

The photo came after Albanese had landed in London to attend a range of meetings and conferences.

He expressed confidence that Trump would back the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine pact after holding a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer at Downing Street in London, where the pair vowed to co-operate on critical minerals and defence technologies.

Albanese also used the opportunity to express openness to former British prime minister Tony Blair running a post-war authority in Gaza, as he rejected the anti-immigration politics of insurgent British right-wing populist leader Nigel Farage.

Albanese met with Blair to discuss the Middle East earlier in the day, just hours after it was revealed the White House is backing a plan that would see the former British Labour leader head a temporary administration of the Gaza Strip when the war ends.

Blair’s appointment could arouse controversy because of his role supporting the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when he was British prime minister.

“Tony Blair is someone who’s always played a constructive role, he’s someone who does look for solutions,” Albanese told reporters.

“He’s someone who has been involved in the Middle East issues for some period of time, and I’m sure that he will always play a constructive role because that’s the nature of Tony Blair.”

Asked whether Blair would have his support to run Gaza after the war, Albanese said the pair had discussed “some of what he has undertaken and the discussions that he’s had”.

“I don’t want to pre-empt those processes, but it is an important opportunity to be informed ... The world wants to see this conflict end, and the world wants to see this violence end.”

Under the proposal being pushed by the White House, as reported by Israeli media outlets, Blair would lead a body called the Gaza International Transitional Authority that would have a mandate to be Gaza’s “supreme political and legal authority” for as long as five years.

The authority would initially be based in Egypt before assuming control of the territory with the backing of a United Nations-endorsed multinational peacekeeping force largely led by Arab countries.

Albanese has expressed openness to Australia participating in such a force, though any role would likely be small.

Since 2016, Blair has led the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit that has sought to promote peace in the Middle East and a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Albanese will travel to Balmoral, Scotland, to meet King Charles III on Saturday local time before he addresses a crowd at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool on his final day in the UK.

The prime minister appeared in the evening at a dinner reception at Downing Street carrying a four-pack of Albo Pale Ale, a beer named after him made by Sydney brewery Willie the Boatman.

As well as Starmer, Albanese met British Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch but said he had no plans to meet Reform leader Nigel Farage, who spearheaded the Brexit campaign, while in London.

“I don’t want to see the rise of populist organisations such as that,” Albanese said when asked about Reform’s surging popularity in the UK.

“I met with the mainstream opposition party here ... Parties of governance have to come up with solutions, not to seek to divide people.”

YouGov polling on Friday showed that Reform would be close to having enough support to form a majority government if an election were held today, and would increase its parliamentary representation from five seats to 311.

The poll found Labor would be left with 144 seats and the Tories with just 45 seats.

Earlier in the day, Albanese appeared alongside Starmer, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Icelandic Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir at a conference where they discussed how centre-left parties could combat the rise of the far right.

Albanese said the Coalition had resoundingly lost the May election in part because it practised “grievance politics” that sought to prey on people’s fears of change rather than offer solutions to complex problems.

“It’s always easy just to try to tear things down. What’s hard is building things up,” Albanese said.

Asked about the future of the AUKUS pact, which is under review by the Pentagon, Albanese said: “There is no indication that I’ve seen of anything other than support for AUKUS going forward.

“It is in the interests of all three nations. It’s in the interests of Australia, in the interests of the United States and in the interests of the United Kingdom.”

The future of AUKUS will be high on the agenda when Albanese travels to Washington, DC, on October 20 to meet Trump for their first bilateral meeting.

The Washington Post recently reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had assured Defence Minister Richard Marles during a recent trip to Washington that the Trump administration would not ditch AUKUS.

“I have always been confident about AUKUS going ahead and every meeting I’ve had, and discussions I’ve had with people in the US administration have always been positive about AUKUS and the role that it plays,” Albanese said.

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