Starmer Must Pick Up the Pieces After Macron Fails to Pin Down the President

Keir Starmer, when he visits the White House tomorrow, will have to pick up the many loose threads left by another chaotic few days of diplomacy in the US in which America voted with Russia at the UN to protect Vladimir Putin from criticism over the invasion of Ukraine, then saw Trump make assurances that the Russian president was happy for European forces to enter Ukraine - only to be contradicted by Moscow hours later.

- Patrick Wintour

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has been working in lockstep with the UK in a way the two countries have failed to since Brexit, and the aim was for the two leaders of Europe's major military powers to use their visits this week to operate as a pincer movement pressing Trump to question Putin's trustworthiness and more broadly to accept that America's future still lay as a partner with Europe.

But Macron, experienced in massaging the US president's ego yet unafraid of correcting him in public, probably pinned Trump down less than he hoped, and on the issue on which some headway was made - Russia apparently accepting European forces acting as guarantors inside Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire - the progress was later called into question.