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Boris Johnson has defended the US as a “bastion of peace and freedom” amid growing protests following the death of George Floyd. 

The prime minister said the US was the UK’s “most important ally in the world today” after he was pressed on president Donald Trump’s response to the demonstrations. 

It comes after widespread outrage and demands for change from campaigns such as Black Lives Matter, both in the US and across the globe, following Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis. 

The 46-year-old Black man died after white police officer Derek Chauvin held him under his knee for almost nine minutes.

Floyd could be heard to say “I can’t breathe” during his last moments. 

In response to the protests, Trump said he was the “president of law and order” threatened to deploy the military. 

He also suggested that a 75-year-old protester shoved by police in Buffalo, New York, last week could be “a set up” by “an Antifa provocateur.”

Speaking in the Commons during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, SNP MP Kirsty Blackman called Trump’s response “horrendous” and pressed the PM whether he still believed his American counterpart still had “many, many good qualities”, adding “if so, what are they?”. 

Johnson said he believed Floyd’s death was “absolutely appalling” and reiterated his own view that “Black lives matter”. 

Gesturing to the opposition benches, he went on to say: “And as for the qualities of Mr Trump, let me say: he amongst many other things he is president of the United States, which is our most important ally in the world today. 

“And whatever people say about it, whatever people on the left say about it, the United States is a bastion of peace and freedom and has been for most of my lifetime.” 

The impact of Floyd’s death is still being felt in the UK, with protestors pulling the Bristol statue of 17th Century slave trader Edward Coulson into the River Avon on Sunday. 

A statue of slaver Robert Milligan, meanwhile, which was outside the Museum of London Docklands has been pulled down, after a decision by the Canal and River Trust.