Next week, Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump will sit down together for only the second time.
The first was a dinner at Trump Tower in September alongside Foreign Secretary David Lammy – a meeting that seemed, by most accounts, to go down well.
But Trump was only a candidate then. Now he’s president, and the time for cordial getting-to-know-you sessions is firmly over.
Past meetings between British prime ministers and US presidents have often focused on reaffirming the so-called ‘special relationship’ and discussing economic ties.
Sir Keir has a very different job to do this time, in very different times with a very different kind of leader.
When the doors close to the Oval Office and the two men are alone, the camera-ready smiles will likely fade as the PM begins the delicate dance of winning over Trump without winding him up.
The stakes, both for the UK and Europe, appear to be quite high.
Top of the agenda, of course, is the war in Ukraine and Trump’s push for a peace deal – which has sidelined European leaders and, to a large extent, even Ukraine itself.
Today, officials from the US government have been meeting with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia to discuss whether there’s room to begin talks.
Ukraine will not be present, after President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv had been told about the plans too late.
Since Trump revealed last Wednesday he had spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the phone, the UK government’s line has been that there can be no talks about the future of Ukraine without Ukraine.
Sir Keir might choose to push that sentiment next week.
In a speech last night following crisis talks in Paris, he said the Washington meeting will allow them to ‘discuss what we see as the key elements of a lasting peace’.
However, European leaders will also be expecting him to press their view on the terms of peace in Ukraine.
That will likely include the need for a ‘US backstop’, which Sir Keir mooted in his speech last night.
He said a ‘US security guarantee was the only way to effectively deter Russia’ from further attacks on Ukraine.
One challenge with this might be a lack of agreement on some key points among the leaders.
While Sir Keir said he was prepared to put British troops on the ground as part of a deal, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said such discussions were ‘completely premature’.
Meanwhile, it’s easy to forget that Ukraine is not the only issue on the table.
If the Washington meeting was announced this time last week, we would probably have assumed the talks would be almost entirely focused on tariffs.
The president has not announced any plans to place tariffs on the UK specifically, like he has with Mexico, Canada, China and the EU.
But he has said he wants to put 25% tariffs on steel imported from anywhere in the world, which would include the UK.
On Sunday, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said imposing the import tax ‘would be negative for ourselves, it would be negative for the US as well’.
If there’s any time between the discussions on the future of European security and the postwar transatlantic alliance, Sir Keir might want to sneak in a chat about that too.
And then there’s all the unpredictable stuff that could come up in the next seven days, of course – with this president, firm agendas can be difficult to set.
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