Analysis: Starmer Proves Adept at Juggling Egos at G7

There was one defining image from Keir Starmer's intense diplomatic shift at the G7 summit in Canada: him bending at Donald Trump's waist level to collect dropped pages of a UK-US trade deal. Defining, perhaps. But definitely partial.

- Peter Walker

Arguably more significant was a slightly more prosaic snap slipped out on the Downing Street Flickr feed a day earlier, showing Starmer engrossed in a chat with four other world leaders, Emmanuel Macron, Mark Carney, Giorgia Meloni and Friedrich Merz.

By No 10's version, briefed to reporters after the Sunday evening gathering in a hotel at the summit venue in Kananaskis, Starmer and Merz, the German chancellor, happened on each other by chance and began chatting, before the French, Canadian and Italian leaders joined in. This informal chat over a glass of wine with no officials present was presented as a general pre-summit discussion.

But it would not take much imagination to guess that much of this preparation was based on a perennial subject of modern diplomacy: how to handle Trump.

Taken together, the two vignettes sum up Starmer's balancing act which also takes in foreign and domestic political considerations.

For reasons even Starmer cheerfully admits he doesn't entirely understand, Trump clearly likes him and regularly says so.

As such, Starmer's unofficial role in Canada was to be a sensible voice of liaison with Carney, the host, and others, while also trying to stop the US president wandering too far off-piste.

In terms of overt results, this was not a success. Sitting next to Trump at the leaders' dinner, Starmer helped persuade him to sign up to the one joint G7 statement that emerged, calling on Israel and Iran to pull back from all-out war.

But then, as is so often the case with Trump, came the humiliation.