Charles takes the heat off our embattled PM... for now

For the self-styled monarch of the North, Andy Burnham, the outcome of the state banquet is clear: any hoped-for bid for No 10 has just been kicked into touch by the actual King of England.

- EMILY SHEFFIELD

Such was the buoyant, deferent mood of Donald Trump on the back of his glittering Windsor stay, the press conference at Chequers yesterday passed with barely a whiff of controversy.

Even the much-feared trip wire of Jeffrey Epstein and Peter Mandelson was deftly batted aside by the president, who, instead of rising to the bait, smoothly retorted with a confident smile: “I never knew him.” Meanwhile, Keir Starmer beside him frantically clawed at his notes, as if hoping to bury himself inside them.

Let’s be clear: King Charles III just saved the career of our severely embattled prime minister. Trump’s visit was a masterstroke of British diplomacy. Burnham, who has been chucking increasingly pointed verbal arrows at Starmer, is now firmly back on the sidelines.

There will have been multiple sighs of relief in No 10 that the royals won the day for the PM, as they did in Washington when Starmer was able to flourish a handwritten invitation from King Charles for Trump to attend an unprecedented second state visit. The pomp and ceremony of the two days may have also shown Americans across the Atlantic, fed by increasingly eccentric Maga rhetoric, that we are not overrun by Muslims, held hostage to marauding illegal immigrants and that our streets are largely lawful.