Keir Starmer knew that his first post summit press conference as prime minister was always going to be an important moment.
After a good, solid first international outing since the election victory, where he had been warmly welcomed by fellow world leaders at Nato, Starmer needed to cap off his trip to Washington DC with an equally good, solid performance at the microphone in front of journalists.
Few people appreciate how much preparation goes into what often appear to be perfunctory occasions, but on the plane home, Starmer shared with journalists that in between a succession of bilaterals and Nato council meetings, he and his team had planned for all possible questions.
It all seemed straightforward, and then, as often occurs, the unexpected happened.
Immediately before the press conference Starmer had lined up with fellow Nato member leaders on the stage behind Joe Biden to welcome the hero of the event.
And then…
“President Putin!” the US president announced, with a clearly embarrassed looking Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky standing next to him waiting to go up to the podium.
In fairness to Starmer he did not flinch at the shock of the moment which sent reverberations around the world and has caused an eruption in US politics. He simply applauded in a kind of robotic reaction.
But what was going on in his head was far different.
“You know you just have to tear it all up,” he admitted in relation to his detailed press conference preparation.
So sure enough, Starmer suddenly faced a succession of searching questions on the health of the US president and whether he was fit to be the leader of the free world.
His answers from the podium were solid. He concentrated on the success of the conference and avoided anything that could be seen as a direct comment on the president himself. He did not go as far as Germany’s Olaf Scholz or France’s Emmanuel Macron in endorsing the US president’s fitness, but he neatly gave the impression of doing so without directly saying much.
Unfortunately for the prime minister his answers earlier in the day had already seen him step on one political land mine on the same subject – showing a lack of experience in a subtle but significant way.
In a short broadcast interview, the BBC’s political editor Chris Mason asked Starmer if Biden was “going senile”. Mason had carefully looked up the meaning of the word beforehand to ensure it did not involve a specific medical diagnosis.
As the Cambridge English dictionary notes the word means “showing poor mental ability because of old age”. This certainly seems true of the 81-year-old president.
Starmer gave a natural but poorly executed instant reaction to the question: “No.”
While he elaborated later, by answering the question so directly he had immediately given license to a succession of headlines with the words “Biden and “senile” from the travelling pack of British journalists. In a way it also put the thought in the prime minister’s mind rather than the questioner’s.
It would not have been so easy to run those headlines had he done the professional politician thing of ignoring the question and answering what he wanted to answer as he did at the press conference.
He made a similar mistake flying over to the US in the huddle with journalists. When asked if he would give the pay increases trade unions were demanding for members he also responded with a blunt “no”. It was an answer that caused immediate ructions from union leaders at home to the extent that a senior Downing Street official tried to intervene to get the lobby hacks on tour with the prime minister to change their copy.
“Schoolboy error” was the phrase that sprung to mind.
Clearly Starmer had realised his mistake by the press conference, even though he had probably been more worried about being pursued on the apparent hypocrisy of telling Nato partners they all need to be spending 2.5 per cent of GDP on defence and not giving a timetable for his own government to meet that mark.
But if Starmer ever had a honeymoon – and it is questionable that he did – the Biden controversy ensured it did not last long.
Just after he landed in Washington DC, the actor and Democrat activist George Clooney had an article in The New York Times calling on Biden to quit the presidential race. He joined a number of senior congressional figures, and behind the scenes the voices were even louder.
Starmer had spent much of the Thursday of election day preparing for the visit and looking at the profiles of the individual leaders in anticipation of what seemed to be an inevitable victory. His chief of staff and former senior civil servant Sue Gray prepared a book of profiles on world leaders, although he puts more store in “personal relatonships”.
But he had probably not anticipated such a political storm around the US president. Very few did.
When the two had their bilateral meeting in the Oval Office it had all the appearances at the start – when the media was invited in for the opening remarks – of someone visiting a venerable elderly relative at a care home.
Biden’s voice was a quiet rasping whisper. Apart from his gleaming white teeth he looked incredibly frail. Starmer spoke slowly and loudly, sitting there with his legs wrapped up in tight nervousness over whether something might go wrong.
After the public pleasantries about England’s football victory and Biden supporting Starmer in reversing aspects of Brexit, the two managed to have what everyone inside described as a good meeting which overran the allotted 45 minutes.
In fact, Biden had not put a word wrong all through the summit. But then the Putin/ Zelensky moment happened and as the Downing Street party was heading to the official plane to take everyone home, the US president gave an excruciating press conference where he also managed to confuse vice-president Kamala Harris with Donald Trump.
In fairness to the prime minister, as he did his traditional mingle with journalists on the flight home, he did not put a foot wrong in defending the president over leading a successful summit. With a prisons crisis brewing, trade union anger and a potential rebellion over the two-child benefit cap, he may have been relieved the attention was elsewhere.
But even on what should have been a victory lap summit for the new prime minister, the Biden controversy showed that political realities have bitten quickly and there will be little or no space for him to put a foot wrong.
