Sir Keir Starmer has denied that Joe Biden is “senile” and praised the US president for being on “good form” during their first meeting.
The prime minister brushed off mounting concerns over Biden’s health and his suitability to run again for the White House in November.
Biden was “across all the detail” during talks in the Oval Office on bolstering Western security and supporting Ukraine, said Starmer.
Asked if Biden was senile, the prime minister replied: “No, we had a really good bilateral yesterday, we were billed for 45 minutes, we went on for the best part of an hour, we went through a huge number of issues at pace. He was actually on really good form.”
When pressed further on whether criticism of Biden was misguided, Starmer gave an emphatic “yes”.
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High-profile figures including George Clooney have argued that Biden should step aside in the presidential election, given concerns about his health. These were compounded by the US president’s performance in the first election TV debate, where he was accused of rambling and forgetting his place in the middle of a sentence.
Biden is the presumed Democratic nominee — but has until the party’s convention, beginning on August 19, to decide whether to pull out of the impending race. However, senior party figures believe a decision to pull out earlier would benefit a smooth transition to lining up another nominee.
Clooney, a Democratic party supporter, said this week that Biden’s defenders had “opted to ignore every warning sign” and that “the dam has broken”.
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When Starmer was asked if Clooney’s criticism was unfair, he did not directly deny the suggestion.
Instead, he told the BBC: “Well, I’m giving you my readout of the meeting, we had, as I say, we’ve covered a lot of ground strategic ground international stuff, and not just Ukraine.
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“He was on good form. And, of course, you know, various interventions yesterday, we went straight from that, to the dinner that he hosted. So I was actually really pleased to have the opportunity to be clear about a special relationship and about our long standing commitment to Nato at this really important time.”
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The prime minister also praised Biden, saying he had led on “some of the most challenging issues” facing the world.
The president is understood to have cracked jokes during the meeting and recalled anecdotes from his decades of experience in frontline politics.
Last month, Rishi Sunak also dismissed speculation about Biden’s health when he attended his final foreign summit with G7 leaders.
