BRITAIN backed Donald Trump over Greenland today as a Cabinet minister insisted plans for a joint Nato mission to the Arctic region were “business as usual.”

The US president has insisted he wants control over the semi-autonomous Danish territory and has not ruled out the prospect of using military force to seize it from the fellow Nato member.

Today Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said that a Sunday Telegraph report that British soldiers, warships and planes are being deployed to the island as part of a new “Arctic Sentry” mission “possibly reads something more into business-as-usual discussions amongst Nato allies than there actually are.”

But she added that Britain agreed with Mr Trump that the Arctic Circle “is becoming an increasingly contested part of the world with the ambitions of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and China.”

“Whilst we haven’t seen the appalling consequences in that part of the world that we’ve seen in Ukraine, it is really important that we do everything that we can with all of our Nato allies to ensure that we have an effective deterrent in that part of the globe against Putin,” she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg.

Mr Trump has previously said he wants to take control of Greenland, which has a strategic location and vast natural resources — and “if we don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way,” he added on Friday.

Disgraced former ambassador to the US Lord Peter Mandelson, also appearing on Ms Kuenssberg’s show today, said that he did not believe Mr Trump would use the military against a Nato ally.