An encounter between Keir Starmer and Joe Biden should be a meeting of minds. The British and US leaders’ global perspectives are neatly aligned, as happens from time to time in a way that makes the transatlantic “special relationship” more than a diplomatic platitude. But the political cycles are out of phase. Starmer is victorious, ascendant, new. Biden looks beaten by age.
The US president’s decline, painfully exposed in his recent TV debate against Donald Trump, has stirred panic in a Democratic party that needs a more dynamic candidate to fight November’s election. The same anxiety, less openly expressed, will swirl around the gathering of Nato leaders that brings Starmer to Washington for his first international fixture as prime minister.
