This is going to sound like a Barbara Cartland novel but it actually happened. Donald Trump seized Peter Mandelson’s hand and went all husky. Soon he was telling Peter what a beautiful speaking manner he had.
‘Wish I had that accent,’ said the President, timbre all throaty and back-seat-of-the-taxi-ish. Peter pinkened, clasped his palms and said: ‘My mother would be so proud. Late at night you took it to another level.’
This touching scene occurred in the Oval Office, Washington DC, where Mr Trump had just conducted an (excruciating) conference call with Sir Keir Starmer.
The PM, at his most Rodneyish, was on the other side of the Atlantic at a factory in Solihull. At first we could hear him only through Mr Trump’s telephone loudspeaker. It made the nasal knight even more bog-snorkellish than usual.
‘Great deal for both sides,’ drawled Mr Trump. ‘There won’t be any red tape.’ There speaks a man who plainly has had limited dealings with HM Customs and Excise.
After some more honeyed hyperbole, in which he simultaneously claimed the deal was ‘conclusive’ and not yet concluded, he turned to the voice-box on his desk and said soothingly, ‘Mr Prime Minister, please take it away’.
This was spoken in the jazz-concert sense. It was the moment for Sir Keir’s solo. ‘Foxtrot Charlie, pick-up in ten minutes at Elsie’s chippie on Lisson Grove,’ obliged Sir Keir. Something like that.
He really could have been a mini-cab firm despatcher crackling through a walkie-talkie. Heavens, what a dreadful noise his larynx makes, and it only tightens when he is nervous. He could have been playing kazoo, he was so honky.
Donald Trump seizes Peter Mandelson by the hand in a touching moment in the Oval Office
Happily the BBC TV audio soon switched to the live feed from Solihull so that we could hear his dulcet tones via that, rather than the Oval Office’s tinny receiver. Sir Keir, leaning forward on his seat, proceeded at length to ladle chicken schmaltz over his opposite number. He addressed POTUS as ‘Donald’ and kept working the name into his sentences.
‘Can I pay tribute, Donald, to your negotiating team,’ he began. And ‘I want to thank you for your leadership, Donald.
I’m really pleased. It feels really historic. Really good to talk. Tribute to your leadership.’ Etc.
The tone of a mid-rank gopher grateful to a mafia don for not having him rubbed out in a Staten Island parking-lot.
Lord Mandelson, who is British ambassador to Washington DC, was representing us in Mr Trump’s den. Alongside him, standing like a wall of football defenders at a free-kick with their hands over their soft parts, stood Vice-President James Vance and three US trade negotiators.
Mandy relaxed visibly when the Starmer call ended. It is never wise to speculate what a sphinx such as Peter thinks but he would have been justified in feeling Sir Keir could have kept things shorter, and a mite less familiar. Mr Trump did not radiate energy during the PM’s remarks. Mr Vance looked bored, too.
Once they had got rid of Sir Keir, Lord Mandelson delivered a pretty speech in which he disclosed that Mr Trump telephoned Sir Keir the previous night and made 11th-hour demands. After which, it seems, No 10 spiralled into frenzied activity.
Now, perhaps, one understood why Lady Starmer looked so tired when accompanying her husband to the VE Day service at Westminster Abbey at noon. Poor love probably didn’t get much sleep.
Back in the Oval Office, Mr Trump repeatedly enthused about Brexit and complained about the European Union. ‘You made the right decision years ago,’ he said of our escape from Brussels. Lord Mandelson smiled, glassily.
Negotiate in a rush, repent at leisure? Old Trump certainly put the hustle on his British counterparts. Downing Street had plainly not expected this accelerated announcement.
In the panic, Westminster reporters were sent to Coventry – literally – before it dawned on No 10 that they had despatched them to the wrong car factory. Oh well, at least we might now still have some factories.
