For a prime minister who has perhaps had his hardest two weeks in office, Donald Trump became the unlikely elixir of a tough political run.

It's not a sentence I imagined writing in the run-up to this state visit - particularly when the UK ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson , was sacked from his post but days ago - but this state visit will go down as a success for a PM in dire need of a win.

From the pomp and pageantry of the first day , to the hard business at Chequers , every detail was carefully choreographed to appeal to the president - including a stay in Windsor Castle, and a bagpipe chorus welcoming him (in a nod to his Scottish heritage) into Sir Keir Starmer 's country retreat.

Starmer went all out to flex all the soft power he could deploy to garner some

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