MINISTERS risked further alienating the Labour membership yesterday as they issued “obsequious” praise for newly inaugurated US President Donald Trump.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who previously called Mr Trump a “racist and KKK/neonazi sympathiser,” now says he is a “revisionist actor” who merely wants to change the rules of the game.

Mr Lammy also claimed that Mr Trump believed in the US being “strong and powerful” but he was “not a man who, in any sense, is a warmonger.”

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The Donald Trump I met … had incredible grace, generosity, very keen to be a good host, very funny, very, very, very friendly, very warm, I have to say, about the UK, our royal family, Scotland.”

The Tottenham MP said Mr Trump seems very focused on the possibility of normalising Saudi relations with Israel, which he said can only come if there is a path to a two-state solution in the Middle East.

A spokeswoman for Momentum said: “The sight of leading government figures making obsequious comments to get into Donald Trump’s good books is galling for most Labour Party members and supporters.

“Trump’s climate denial, his racism, his attacks on LGBT+ people and women, as well as his aggressive promotion of economic sanctions against countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, make him a threat to all the values Labour is supposed to believe in.

“The government should be standing up to the US and charting an independent foreign policy based on ethics and sovereignty, not playing the role of lapdog.”

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is to hold talks on a range of issues including trade, the war in Ukraine and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East with the president in Washington within weeks, said Mr Lammy.

There is speculation that Labour grandee Lord Mandelson’s diplomatic appointment could be blocked by the US, and Mr Trump’s team has also opposed the Chagos Islands deal.

Downing Street dismissed suggestions that past comments made by Cabinet ministers were linked to the lack of British ministerial attendance at the inauguration.

Number 10 also denied there were concerns that the US could be forming a closer relationship with Italy after the country’s premier Giorgia Meloni was invited to the event in Washington.