Vaccum nozzles to maximum suction. Sir Keir Starmer, our prime ministerial plodder, was driven up to the White House in an enormous, bomb-proof Chevrolet.
Jumping down from its fuselage he found himself staring up at a large orange bulk. ‘Mr President!’ Gulp.
Sir Keir initially looked terrified. Donald Trump, less chunky than of old but still a big unit, took possession of his small visitor with a six-second handshake.
Sir Keir hesitantly patted the presidential shoulder – child strokes lion at zoo – but Trump barely noticed.
He was already heading inside for an unusually long Oval Office chat, more accurately monologue, during which Sir Keir said roughly as much as the third-spear-carrier in an Elizabethan drama.
And yet the visit was a wonderful success. Sir Keir did not have his head bitten off. Phew and hooray!
There was bad news, too. Old Trump – remarkably fizzy for 78 – didn’t seem to mind if Labour’s sub-Marxist snivellers spend billions persuading Mauritius to accept our Chagos Islands.
Sir Keir’s anti-colonialist lawyer chums will claim their self-hating triumph on the say of an emperor overseas.
Sir Keir hesitantly patted the presidential shoulder – child strokes lion at zoo – but Trump barely noticed, writes Quentin Letts
The Prime Minister arrived in the US capital on Wednesday night and was driven to the British embassy, where Lord Mandelson was throwing a do at his Lutyens residence. Washington has already changed his lordship – I swear he has slimmed a little. Looking more and more like Leslie Crowther.
My dears, the flowers. Hay-fever nightmare. Blooms filled every shelf, every niche and inglenook: lilac, cymbidium orchids, blue mophead hydrangeas and ‘dusty miller’ senecios less glamorously known as silver ragwort.
Probably flown in from Hawaii. Bang goes the ozone layer.
Sir Keir and Lord Mandelson both made short speeches in front of a chimneypiece that could have been a florist’s counter. ‘Our best days lie ahead,’ quacked our adenoidal hero, slowly unwinding.
Lord Mandelson averred that Mr Trump was ‘going to be a very consequential president for this country indeed’. When Mandy is in this mode, unction levels are on a par with Captain Webb, the Victorian swimmer who smeared himself in porpoise fat before leaping into the English Channel.
Sir Keir was stabled at Blair House, a creaky 19th-century joint near the White House. Its Union flag was flying upside down. One jet-lagged sleep later came the day of danger. Would the mangy lion bite? Or would it purr?
The latter, thank heavens. Donald played nice. In his yellow chair in the Oval Office he commanded the scene. Normal politicians block and obscure. Trump comes out and geysers headlines.
Sir Keir reached into his jacket pocket and coyly produced a sleepover invitation from the King. It bore what looked like a post-prandial, handwritten ‘Charles R’. Maybe they had to give HM a few scoops of electric soup to get him to sign the damn thing.
Sir Keir raved on about what an honour a second state visit was and claimed the first one had been a wonderful success
Sir Keir raved on about what an honour a second state visit was and claimed the first one had been a wonderful success. Er, if you say so. Word of warning to Lady Starmer: at one point the President said, ‘I’m very impressed with his wife.’ When the late Queen Mary said that sort of thing, it meant she wanted to take it home with her.
The two principals’ seconds attended on beige sofas, among them David Lammy and Sir Keir’s pocket-rottweiler Morgan McSweeney. That dreadful man Jonathan Powell was there, too.
One of the British reporters asked Mr Trump if he still thought (as he said last week) that Ukraine’s President Zelensky was ‘a dictator’. ‘Did I say that?’ said Trump with faux innocence. The room tinkled with laughter. A revolting moment.
At the set-piece press conference Sir Keir again droned on about Mr Trump’s ‘close bond with the King’. Poor Charles. Thrown on to the roulette table like a chip. Sir Keir was given the opportunity to speak up for Canada. He did not take it.
Mr Trump commented: ‘What a beautiful accent.’ He thinks the nasal knight has an attractive voice? He really is nuts!