LONDON – It is almost exactly 50 years since Monty Python and the Holy Grail hit cinemas – a brutally caustic lampooning of Britain’s national myth: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.
Among its protagonists is the unforgettable Brave Sir Robin – the knight who would gallop towards danger espousing his own fearlessness, yet find himself scarpering to safety when the threat became too real.
The film grossed more in the US than any other British picture that year, establishing comedy as one of the UK’s great transatlantic exports – which endures to this day.
So there is no more fitting celebration of Holy Grail’s 50th birthday than for Britain’s prime minister to export himself to Washington to perform a farce even the Pythons would be proud of.
Brave Sir Keir, the principled and just – who occasionally sits at the EU’s own Round Table – made haste for Donald Trump’s White House.
Starmer has been lauded for his courage on Ukraine in recent weeks. He was the first European leader to commit to providing troops for a peacekeeping force. This week, he announced UK defence spending would be increased from 2.3% to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 – which the US defence secretary described as a “strong step”.
At a reception at the British embassy on Wednesday night, videos showed a self-assured Starmer. He even quipped about the many similarities between Trump and London’s divisive new ambassador, Peter Mandelson – which apparently go beyond their mutual affinity for New York financiers.
And so European hopes were high that Starmer, for five years Britain’s chief prosecutor, could talk a modicum of sense into Trump, a felon and compulsive liar the likes of whom Starmer has routinely put away in courtroom exchanges.
Yet, once in the Oval Office on Thursday, Brave Sir Keir, like Sir Robin, made a ‘gallant retreat’.
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