When on 8 May Donald Trump and Sir Keir Starmer with their respective teams made an enormous show of signing a “big and beautiful” trade deal it was meant to show the rest of the world what could be done.
For Sir Keir there was the personal victory. Here was the UK — previously consigned to the back of the queue over Brexit by Barack Obama — now at the front of the line in getting a deal to deal with Trump’s tariffs.
