US President Donald Trump at the state banquet on Wednesday evening, flanked by King Charles and the Princess of Wales. Both the President and the King hailed the UK/US special relationship in their speeches. © PA Images
The Donald landed in the UK on Tuesday night for a two day visit – the only time a US President has been invited for a second, all-bells-and-whistles State Visit in history. Arriving by helicopter at Windsor Castle on Wednesday, he was welcomed by the Prince and Princess of Wales, 1,500 personnel from the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force, 150 horses, and a 41 gun salute, before taking a carriage ride around Windsor Castle with The King and Queen. The President laid a wreath for Queen Elizabeth II in St George’s Chapel, before later that evening enjoying a State Banquet and further military pageantry. On Thursday he headed to Chequers for a day of meetings, receptions and a press conference with the Prime Minister before hopping back on Air Force One for the trip back to the States.
The Government has been keen to highlight the £150bn of inward investment from US companies as part of President Trump's unprecedented second State Visit. Key new announcements included an agreement between X-Energy and Centrica to build 12 advanced modular reactors in the UK; £30bn of investment by Microsoft into its AI infrastructure and ongoing operations in the UK; an additional £2bn of investment by Salesforce in the UK by 2030; a £1.5bn investment from Palantir in defence innovation; Boeing's conversion of two 737 aircraft in Birmingham for the US Air Force – the first USAF aircraft built in the UK in over 50 years; a £90bn investment pledge from Blackstone for datacentre development in the UK; a £3.9bn investment from Prologis to expand Cambridge Biomedical Campus and upgrade Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal; a £150m investment from Amentum; and a £37m commitment from STAX to expand their UK operations. This marks 'the largest investment package ever associated' with a State Visit, surpassing previous records set by the Chinese and Korean State Visit in 2015 and 2023 respectively.
For political journalists and commentators, the best was saved until last with the Chequers press conference on Thursday, during which the President indirectly (or directly – it’s difficult to know) criticised the UK’s investment in wind energy as “a disaster” and a “very expensive joke”; repeated that he had solved 7 “unsolvable” wars since taking office; argued Putin had “really let me down”; stated he was “working very hard on Israel and Gaza and what’s happening over there”; and noted he was in “disagreement” with Keir Starmer over the UK’s planned recognition of a Palestinian state this weekend. And really saving the best until the very, very last… Trump rather bizarrely and rapidly responded “I don’t know him” to a final question on Peter Mandelson and his connections to Jeffrey Epstein (despite praising the now sacked UK Ambassador to the US in a meeting in the Oval Office just a few months ago)… whilst a rather panicked-looking Keir Starmer shuffled his papers at his podium. Well, someone had to ask the question, right?
If you’re heading to Bournemouth for Lib Dem Conference this weekend, there are worse ways to spend the two hour train journey than making sure you can tell the difference between your Ians and your Helens, your Sarahs and your Alistairs…
Avoid any mishaps or embarrassments by heading over to LibDemConference.co.uk to check out our Lib Dem only version of our Guessminster MP recognition trainer. Keep your eyes peeled next week for our Labour and Tory versions.
92 hours and 36 minutes – length of time the House of Lords has sat over the past two weeks. Talk about earning yourself a recess…
24% – increase in public borrowing over the last five months, compared to the same period last year
£55 – cost of an annual membership of Your/Zarah Sultana’s Party
10 – number of Labour MPs who have privately told Politico they no longer have confidence in the Prime Minister
2 – number of illegal migrants returned to France under the ‘one-in one-out’ treaty, after last-minute legal challenges delayed deportations
15 – number of former and current Tory MPs who have publicly defected to Reform
1.7 million – number of children in 2024-25 identified with special educational needs, up from 1.3 million in 2014, according to the Education Committee’s latest report
6 – number of times the US has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
£60bn – the fashion industry’s contribution to the UK economy, highlighted by Rosie Wrighting MP in her Westminster Hall debate on the commencement of London Fashion Week this week
London saw an estimated 110,000 – 150,000 people join a ‘Unite the Kingdom’ march last Saturday, as the rally organised by far-right activist Tommy Robinson resulted in injuries to 26 police officers and saw Elon Musk say in a video message to those attending “whether you choose violence or not, violence is coming to you. You either fight back or die”. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood labelled Musk’s comments “abhorrent”.
Reform UK announced the first defection of a sitting Conservative MP this Parliament, as Danny Kruger joined the party and said “the Conservatives are over”. Kruger has been an MP since 2019 and is now tasked with helping Reform UK prepare for Government, though Kruger was never actually a Minister while the Conservatives were in power.
Your Party or My Party? Controversy and chaos hit the Jeremy Corbyn-Zarah Sultana alliance this week, after Sultana launched a membership website asking people to sign up for £55 and then saying that over 20,000 people had done so. Corbyn and the other members put out a statement saying Sultana had sent an ‘unauthorised email’ and urged people to cancel any direct debits, to which Sultana alleged she had been subject to a ‘sexist boys' club’ and ‘excluded completely’.
In Corbyn’s former party, and a couple of weeks before Labour descends on Liverpool for its Party Conference, the Public Office (Accountability) Bill was introduced, commonly referred to as the Hillsborough Law. The Bill, if passed, will introduce a new ‘professional and legal Duty of Candour’ to ensure public officials ‘act with honesty and integrity at all times’, and also create a new offence for ‘misleading the public’.
Interest rates were held at 4% while Government borrowing reached £18bn in August, the highest level for five years. With the Budget just two months away now, borrowing over the first five months of the financial year is now £83.8bn, £16.2bn higher than the same period last year.
The UK’s ‘one in, one out’ agreement with France took effect this week, but not before some legal challenges and frustration for the Government. After the High Court blocked the removal of the first man who was due to be deported earlier in the week following claims he was a victim of modern slavery, the Government confirmed a flight had taken off on Thursday morning with a different man who arrived via small boat in August.
The UK will contribute to NATO’s ‘Eastern Sentry’ mission, with RAF Typhoon jets to take part in a mission launched following the violation of both Polish and Romanian airspace by Russian drones. The Prime Minister said the aircraft were a “show of strength” and also “vital in deterring aggression [and] securing NATO airspace”.
The Strategic Priorities for GB Energy have been confirmed, including to ‘drive clean energy deployment as a strategic developer, investor and owner of clean energy projects’; and to ensure that everybody benefits from clean energy transition by ‘increasing public ownership and community involvement in the development of clean energy projects’. Also in GBE news, Gwen Parry-Jones, the current CEO of Great British Energy – Nuclear, confirmed she would be stepping down on 30 September.
£1.1bn of funding was announced for coastal communities across the UK as part of London Shipping Week, to be funded jointly by government and industry. £448m from the Government will be used to reduce emissions from UK shipping, while £700m of private investment will support ‘major UK ports and leading industry players’.
The Commons managed a short two-day sitting before rising for the conference recess on Tuesday, squeezing in a range of business before MPs trade the debating chamber for the conference halls of Bournemouth, Liverpool and Manchester. Monday featured Shabana Mahmood’s debut at the dispatch box as Home Secretary, followed by a ministerial statement on the Official Secrets Act and the dropping of charges related to allegations of Chinese espionage. The House then moved on to consider and vote on the Lords amendments to the Employment Rights Bill, unsurprisingly rejecting all of the non-government amendments and sending it straight back to the upper chamber in a game of ‘ping pong’. Tuesday’s business included an emergency debate on the continued controversy of Lord Mandelson’s appointment, immaculately timed for Trump’s touchdown that evening, and the second reading of the Sentencing Bill.
Over in the Lords, peers wrapped up committee stage on the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, ploughing through a whopping 113 amendments in just six and a half hours on Wednesday. They also completed the committee stage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and continued the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, before rising this afternoon to join their colleagues in the other place in heading off for the party conference season.
Almost half of Britons think the Government should recognise Palestine as an independent state, according to YouGov’s latest polling. Taken ahead of an announcement by the Prime Minister on recognition expected this Sunday, the polling concluded that 44% of people in the UK think Palestine should be a recognised state, with 18% disagreeing and 37% unsure. Support is, unsurprisingly, highest amongst Green Party voters (with 68% calling for recognition) and lowest amongst Reform UK voters (with just 17% thinking Palestine should be recognised).
One fifth of the UK has used AI as a source of advice for personal problems, a poll by Ipsos found this week, as 11% of those asked admitted to using the software as a companion; 9% as a substitute therapist; 6% for advice on dating profiles; while 7% turned to artificial intelligence for romantic advice. Despite increasingly becoming the nation’s Agony Aunt, the poll also concluded that the majority of Brits (56%) agree that current advances in AI ‘threaten the structure of society’, with only 29% thinking that the software has a positive societal effect.
The UK ‘is in danger of sleepwalking into economic torpor’, concluded the latest report from the Centre for Policy Exchange assessing the UK’s economic problems. The report states that the lack of competitiveness in the economy is causing the country to ‘live beyond its means’, and suggests three guiding foundations to grow GDP per capita and increase productivity. The first is to assess fiscal discipline, calling for a ‘smaller, more sustainable state with a lower ratio of spending to GDP’; the second to implement a supply-side agenda to raise the potential growth rate, focussed on investment, innovation, infrastructure and incentives; and finally to create a ‘competitive City that serves domestic growth’, through ‘credible and accountable monetary policy, with a clear break from previous cheap money policies.’
You’ve Got to Laugh
After more than 60 hours of combing through 650 amendments in committee stage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, it was almost inevitable that tempers in the Lords would fray. By 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Labour’s Baroness Young of Old Scone seized the moment to vent at her colleague, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who had just written a Telegraph article claiming that “eco-zealots are crushing the economy.” She said: “I must admit that, if I had had the neck of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in my hands this morning after reading the Telegraph article, he would no longer be here to press his amendment tonight.” Not very comradely Baroness Young…
Can it really be called a successful State Visit if Trump doesn’t land in the You’ve Got to Laugh section? As Trump rattled off his triumphs in solving seven “unsolvable” conflicts, he couldn’t quite remember who was fighting — is it Albania and “Aber-baijan,” or the long-time conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia?
