Sir Keir Starmer has dismissed concerns about Joe Biden’s health after the US president mistakenly called Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin”.
Mr Biden made the gaffe as he introduced the Ukrainian president at the closing ceremony of Nato’s 75th anniversary summit.
But the Prime Minister, who earlier said the president was not senile and had been on “good form”, insisted that he “deserves credit” for hosting the summit in Washington DC.
“I would urge everyone to look at the substance of what’s been achieved over these two days,” Sir Keir said. “We have a bigger Nato, more countries, we have a stronger Nato.
“We have a real sense of resolve. The third of the sessions, the council sessions, was the session with president Zelensky there in relation to Ukraine.
“It was a session that he described as a success because of the package coming out of it, and president Biden led through all of that. That is an incredible achievement of this council.
“And when we think of the global threats, that is the best possible outcome we could have had today, and so I think he deserves credit for that, as does the team would have worked with him.”
The Prime Minister also used the press conference to say that Russia poses a “generational threat” to the West and that security would be Labour’s “first priority” in Government.
Sir Keir went on to defend his reset of relations with the European Union, insisting that he did not want Britain to rejoin the bloc.
“It’s about a reset of our relations and actually about an institutional reset,” he said. “It’s not about going back into the EU.
“But it is certainly a reset because I think for very many people, there was a sense after Brexit that the UK become too inward-looking, was not as interested as it once was in its place on the global stage, on the international stage.”
The Prime Minister spent the final day of the summit having bilateral talks with Nato leaders, including Justin Trudeau and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He will arrive back in Britain on Friday.