Trump’s UK visit exposed a humiliating deference from Starmer, royals and politicians alike, says our multi award-winning opinion columnist Dani Garavelli, who states with disgust that the events of last week were simply a spectacle of appeasement that traded values for pageantry, silence and Silicon Valley deals...

What defined Donald Trump’s state visit for me was the moment in the Chequers press conference when the US president leaned across the podium, gave Keir Starmer a pat and, while the Prime Minister was still speaking, whispered: “That’s good.”

It was Starmer’s back Trump laid hands on, but it might as well have been his head, so patronising a gesture was it.

The only thing that could have increased the humiliation would have been the holding up of a dog biscuit although, of course, a treat for rolling over was proffered in the form of a £31 billion Silicon Valley tech deal, which Starmer wolfed down with all the grateful tail-wagging the president demands.

Some people have praised Starmer for keeping him onside. But there’s pragmatism, and then there’s prostration – and last week’s display of ostentatious appeasement was definitely the latter.

The combined unctuousness of royals and political leaders was particularly galling given the recent sacking of Peter Mandelson as American ambassador.

Mandelson’s services were dispensed with not because the Labour leader was appalled by his links with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – if this was the case he would never have been appointed – but because the extent of his support had leaked into the public domain.

Trump’s links with Epstein have been in the public domain for a long time. He is alleged to have contributed a drawing of a naked woman’s torso to the same 50th birthday book that first got Mandelson in hot water. But Mandelson is expendable in a way that Trump is not, and so Starmer not only jettisoned the one while feting the other, he stood silently by as Trump pretended not to know the disgraced diplomat whose hand he had shaken earlier this year.

The same is true of King Charles. His brother Andrew was stripped of his military titles, royal patronages, and access to funds from the royal family’s allowance around the same time he settled a civil sexual assault lawsuit with Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre.

And yet........

© Herald Scotland