When TV cameras are let in to film world leaders meeting in person, the resulting footage is usually incredibly boring for journalists and incredibly safe for politicians.Not with Donald Trump.
Sir Keir Starmer ran the gauntlet on Monday.Trump latest: President treats PM to a ride on Air Force OnePut through a total of almost 90 minutes of televised questioning alongside the American leader, it was his diciest encounter with the president yet.
But he still just about emerged intact.For a start, he can claim substantive policy wins after Trump announced extra pressure on Vladimir Putin to negotiate a ceasefire and dialled up the concern over the devastating scenes coming from Gaza.
There were awkward moments aplenty though.
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Trump calls London mayor a ‘nasty person’
Top of the list is Mr Trump’s trashing of the prime minister’s Labour colleague, London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan.
But more important than that, Monday’s meeting was the clearest representation of the political gulf that separates the two leaders.”He’s slightly more liberal than me,” Mr Trump said of Sir Keir when he arrived in Scotland.What an understatement.Read more:Trump reignites row with Sir Sadiq KhanEU leaders resigned to US trade deal
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The two leaders held talks in front of the media. Pic: Reuters
On green energy, immigration, taxation and online regulation, the differences were clear to see.Sir Keir just about managed to paper over the cracks by chuckling at times, choosing his interventions carefully and always attempting to sound eminently reasonable.
At times, it had the energy of a man being forced to grin and bear inappropriate comments from his in-laws at an important family dinner.But hey, it stopped a full Trump implosion – so I suppose that’s a win.My main takeaway from this Scotland visit though is not so much the political gulf present between the two men, but the gulf in power.
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Trump gives Putin new deadline to end war
Sir Keir flew the length of the country he leads to be the guest at the visiting president’s resort.He was then forced to sit through more than an hour of uncontrolled, freewheeling questioning from a man most of his party and voters despise, during which he was offered unsolicited advice on how to beat Nigel Farage and criticised (albeit indirectly) on key planks of his government’s policy platform.
In return he got warm words about him (and his wife) and relatively incremental announcements on two foreign policy priorities.So why does he do it?Because, to borrow a quote from a popular American political TV series: “Air Force One is a big plane and it makes a hell of a noise when it lands on your head.”
