UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he rushed to pick up papers dropped by US President Donald Trump at the G7 Summit partly because he feared what the White House security team might do if anyone else tried to help.
Starmer and Trump were talking to reporters about their newly signed off UK-US trade deal when the moment descended into farce as the president brandished a folder containing the arrangements and the papers spilled out onto the floor.
Sir Keir fell to his knees to scoop them up and hand them back to President Trump.
“There are quite strict rules about who can get close to the president,” he told reporters.
“I mean, seriously, I think if any of you had stepped forward other than me, I was just deeply conscious that in a situation like that it would not have been good for anybody else to have stepped forwards, not that any of you rushed to!”
The prime minister added that President Trump “was on good form” when they met on Monday.
He said that the US-UK trade deal was a “huge relief in terms of the protection of their jobs and their livelihoods” for tens of thousands of people working for Jaguar Land Rover in the West Midlands and in the firm’s supply chain.
There were widespread fears that without a deal job losses would have been inevitable.
“I was on the phone to the CEO of JLR, who rightly reminded me, although I didn’t need much reminding, that 44,000 workers at JLR are extremely relieved and pleased that we got that order signed,” Sir Keir said.
The new arrangement removes tariffs, or import taxes, on the aerospace sector and cuts the levy on cars exported from the UK to the US to 10%.
But the deal did not address the expected removal of charges on steel imports, which are currently at 25%. Negotiations over steel are ongoing.
Trump has raised taxes on goods entering the US, in a series of rapid-fire announcements he says are aimed at encouraging businesses and consumers to buy more American-made goods.
It sparked financial turmoil and alarm around the world, including in the UK, where car manufacturers and steelmakers rely on the US as a key destination for exports.
Sir Keir said on Monday the signing off of the deal marked a “very important day” for both the UK and the US, while Trump said Sir Keir had done a “great job” in doing “what other people… haven’t been able to do” in securing a deal with the US.
The pact has drawn criticism by opposition parties in the UK, with Conservative party leader Kemi Badenoch calling it a “tiny tariff deal”.