Joe Biden has joked that football is coming home because of Keir Starmer.
The Prime Minister met the US President in the Oval Office less than an hour after England secured a place in the Euro 2024 final.
Asked if football is coming home, Mr Starmer replied: “It looks like it.” The President added: “It is good news indeed, it is all because of the Prime Minister.”
A beaming Mr Starmer told Mr Biden: “I began to watch the game with the Netherlands prime minister, but we left at 1-1.” The President laughed, before joking: “And you guys are still talking to one another?”
Mr Biden called the US and UK the “best of allies” and described Britain as “the transatlantic knot” that ties Nato together. Mr Starmer is in Washington DC on his first foreign trip in the job to attend a summit marking the 75th anniversary of Nato.
As he met the President, the PM hailed “a bigger Nato, a stronger Nato and a Nato with the resolve that we need”.
He visited the White House for one-on-one talks with Mr Biden. Later the PM and his wife Vic will attend a dinner of world leaders and their spouses being hosted by the President and Dr Jill Biden.
No10 has confirmed that Mr Starmer will attend the Euro 2024 final in Berlin on Sunday when England will take on Spain.
Earlier Mr Starmer insisted Joe Biden, 81, is not too old to be President as George Clooney urged him to abandon his re-election bid. The move star, who hosted a fundraiser for the President just three weeks ago, called on the Democrats to pick a replacement candidate, warning he “cannot win”.
“I love Joe Biden,” the movie star wrote in the New York Times. “As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him. Believe in his character. Believe in his morals. But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can.”
He added: “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”