Keir Starmer said he rushed to pick up papers dropped by Donald Trump at the G7 summit in Canada mainly to avoid anyone else stepping forward to do so and being tackled by the US president’s security team.
Speaking to reporters in Kananaskis a day after Trump fumbled some of the documents about a UK-US trade deal, letting a sheaf of papers tumble to the ground, Starmer said he had little choice but to bend down and help out.
The UK prime minister said: “I mean, look, there weren’t many choices with the documents and picking it up, because … as you probably know there were quite strict rules about who can get close to the president.
“I mean, seriously, I think if any of you [the media] had stepped forward other than me – I was just deeply conscious that in a situation like it would not have been good for anybody else to have stepped forward, not that any of you rushed to. There’s a very tightly guarded security zone around the president, as you would expect.”
As well as dropping the papers, Trump wrongly announced that he had agreed a deal with the EU, not the UK, and some of his answers were unclear and rambling.
Asked if he had any concerns about Trump’s health, Starmer said: “No, he was in good form yesterday, and I mean we had – I don’t know how many sessions yesterday together as the G7 and then into the evening session as well.”
As Starmer and Trump spoke to the media on Monday before their private talks, the US president was again effusive in his praise for the prime minister.
Asked why Trump liked him so much, Starmer replied: “I mean, that’s really for him to answer, but I think it’s that we do have a good relationship. I think that is in the national interest.
“Frankly, there has long been a close relationship between the US and the UK, as I’ve said many times, on defence and security and intelligence sharing in particular. I’m very pleased that I’ve got a good relationship with him, notwithstanding, as both he and I acknowledge, that our political backgrounds are different.”
