They weren't just delighted with the optics of the two leaders chatting about their families and the royals over winter greens and sea bass – Sir Keir's team believed they had made genuine progress in talks in the Oval Office about Ukraine.

LONDON — In almost every way, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer will walk into the White House on Thursday as an alien in President Donald Trump’s MAGA universe: a former human rights lawyer, a onetime top prosecutor and, after vanquishing Conservatives in elections last summer, the United Kingdom’s most liberal leader in more than a decade.