Sighs of relief that Sir Keir's Trump card could pay big wins...but the threat of it being 'game over' at any time still looms large

WHAT a difference a day makes. As Sir Keir Starmer flew home from Washington DC late on Thursday he did so emboldened by the fact that a crunch White House meeting with Donald Trump had gone far better than feared.

- MARTYN BROWN

The relief was palpable as the grinning Prime Minister said, "I'm happy", offering reporters a thumbs-up before returning to the front of the plane for some rest.

It was in stark contrast to 24 hours earlier when Sir Keir and his team appeared guarded and tense on the outbound journey across the Atlantic to meet the US president.

Clad in a dark suit and shirt, the PM batted away a barrage of questions about the upcoming talk: talks - conscious that a stray comment could enrage the notoriously thin-skinned Mr Trump.

At a glitzy party at the British Ambassador's residence in Washington later that night, one official confided that ministers didn't know how the high stakes meeting with the 47th President would go. They admitted that "wargaming every scenario" had been going on behind the scenes and planning had been going on for months.

"You never know what you're going to get with Trump," the source said. "He can blow the whole thing up with one comment and it's always something that you least expect." As Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky found out yesterday.

But the planning and strategy clearly paid off for the Prime Minister as he jetted back.

Stuffed in his back pocket was the prospect of trade ties with America and a clear signal from the US president that he's unlikely to target Britain with hefty tariffs.

There was progress on securing a "long-lasting" peace deal for Ukraine by trying to persuade Mr Trump the US must support British and European troops in the war-ravaged country - albeit this may now have stalled after the bust-up with Mr Zelensky.

But in a trip that had so much potential to go wrong for Sir Keir, so much went right. He had a big win on tariffs, a big win on a trade deal and a big win on his Chagos Islands surrender to Mauritius after Mr Trump gave it the green light- despite months of claims by Nigel Farage that he would oppose it.