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UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has told President Donald Trump to withdraw all US forces from British bases within 48 hours if he chooses to leave NATO, according to a widely shared screenshot which has been shared across social media in recent weeks.
The picture, posted on X, shows the transcript of an alleged statement made by Starmer, in which he declares that the UK and the rest of Europe will continue to band together in its collective defence regardless of whether the US quits the alliance.
He allegedly adds that the UK would demand decades of backdated rent from the US for stationing its troops on British territory for free.
There are several issues with this supposed speech which prove that it’s fake.
First, despite a recent barrage of insults that Trump has hurled at Starmer for giving limited support of the US in the Iran war, the prime minister’s response has been more measured than this text suggests.
Trump said on 17 March that he was “disappointed” with Starmer over his initial refusal to send aircraft carriers to the Middle East, accusing him of making a mistake and saying that he was “no Winston Churchill”, in reference to the UK’s famous wartime leader.
However, following the president’s tirade, all reputable reporting has stated that Starmer has stressed the importance of the US-UK relationship, assured the UK will stay out of the war apart from measures such as providing the US access to its bases near the region, and that London is working with all its allies to bring stability in the Middle East.
The tone and language used in the fake speech are highly uncharacteristic of Starmer’s usual diplomatic approach.
One of the main accounts sharing it has since deleted its post on X.
Do NATO countries pay each other rent?
The other issue with the text is that it misrepresents NATO’s common defence and cost-sharing policies.
Contrary to what the fake speech claims, the standard NATO policy is that the visiting country doesn’t pay rent to the host country when stationing military personnel there — instead, they cover the operational costs of the facilities they use.
This is underpinned by the 1951 NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA),which says that the receiving country must provide the sending country with the facilities they need, on terms no less favourable than for the host country’s military.
So, as the UK Ministry of Defence wouldn’t pay rent to the UK government for its own bases and, for example, the US wouldn’t need to either.
It also says that member states waive claims against each other for any damage to property used for NATO purposes.
Additionally, a UK-US Cost Sharing Agreement from 1973 outlines that the UK Ministry of Defence maintains ownership of any bases used by the US, and that Washington would be responsible for operational and expansion costs only.
While the agreement is decades old, it’s been confirmed in recent treaties and documents across the alliance that NATO countries do not pay rent to station their military in fellow members.
For example, a parliamentary briefing published in the UK in March 2026 reinforced NATO’s cost-sharing arrangements; Poland and the US’s 2019 Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement underlined that Warsaw will provide the US military with facilities rent-free; and upon joining NATO in 2023, Finland signed its own Defence Cooperation Agreement with the US, which explicitly states it supplements the SOFA.
