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    NHS could pay 25% more for medicines under plan to end row with drugmakers and Trump

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    Ministers are preparing to raise the amount the NHS pays pharmaceutical firms for medicines by up to 25% after weeks of intensive talks with the Donald Trump administration and drugmakers.Labour has drawn up fresh proposals to end a standoff with the industry over drug pricing, including changing the cost-effectiveness thresholds under which new medications are assessed for use on the NHS, according to industry sources.The row has been cited as one of the reasons why big companies in the sector, including MSD (known as Merck in the US) and AstraZeneca, have cancelled or paused investments in the UK in recent weeks, while ramping up investments in the US.The Department of Health and Social Care is in a standoff with the Treasury and No 10 on how to fund the deal, with Downing Street resisting pressure to commit new funds for medicines in next month’s budget.The Liberal Democrats immediately criticised the move, first reported by Politico, asking how much it would cost and whether it would lead to cuts elsewhere in the NHS.The science secretary, Patrick Vallance, has publicly acknowledged that the UK’s spending on new medicines needs to rise from 9% of overall NHS spend, which is below drug spending in the US and many other European countries.The main element of the plan is thought to include raising the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) cost-effectiveness threshold by 25%, which has been unchanged since 1999. Under current rules, Nice considers a medicine costing between £20,000 and £30,000 for every extra year of good-quality life it provides a patient to represent good value for money for the NHS.The Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry on Tuesday reiterated its call for “urgent action” on drug pricing, saying the Nice threshold should be increased as soon as possible in line with inflation to between £40,000 and £50,000, and index-linked thereafter. Making this change would, over time, lead to a greater share of the NHS budget being allocated to medicines, and additional funding would be needed to support this.In talks over the summer, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, proposed a deal that would save the pharmaceutical industry £1bn over three years, with billions more promised over the coming decade.But the industry argued that it was forecast to make repayments totalling £13.5bn over the same period and has been demanding about £2.5bn a year extra.A government source said ministers were prepared to spend more on medicines as they increasingly became more ​innovative and preventive. They cited the example of weight loss injections – which are forecast to save the NHS billions of pounds in treating obesity and associated health problems – and trials for cancer-preventing vaccines.The patient-led campaign group Just Treatment called it “deeply troubling news for patients and the NHS”, adding: “We are at risk of importing America’s disastrous drug pricing crisis.” It called on the government to “take steps to establish a system for developing and manufacturing medicines that puts patients first”.The NHS spent £20.6bn on medicines and medical devices in 2023-24, up from £19.2bn the year before.Trump has put pressure on pharma companies to lower their drug prices in the US and increase them elsewhere, accusing other countries of “freeloading” on high US prices. Nearly two weeks ago, he threatened to impose 100% tariffs on pharmaceutical imports from 1 October to ramp up the pressure, although these did not materialise.In response to pressure from Trump, Pfizer and several other US and European companies, including the UK’s biggest drugmaker, AstraZeneca, have started to cut their prices in the US and to sell directly to patients to cut out costly middlemen.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn return for reducing its prices by up to 85%, Pfizer won a three-year reprieve from tariffs last week, which was seen as a bellwether for the rest of the sector.Last week, Varun Chandra, Starmer’s main business adviser, flew to Washington DC for talks with senior US officials and drug companies, the latest in a series of visits to try to hammer out a deal on pricing and tariffs.A UK government spokesperson said: “We’ve secured a landmark economic partnership with the US that includes working together on pharmaceutical exports from the UK whilst improving conditions for pharmaceutical companies here.“We’re now in advanced discussions with the US administration to secure the best outcome for the UK, reflecting our strong relationship and the opportunities from close partnership with our pharmaceutical industry.”However, the Lib Dem health and social care spokesperson, Helen Morgan, said: “It beggars belief that the government is bending to a bullying US president having told patients for years that life-saving new drugs are unaffordable.“Ministers must come clean about how much this move will cost and whether it will be funded by cuts elsewhere in the NHS. They should also lay their plans before parliament without delay so they can be properly scrutinised. It increasingly feels like this government puts the whims of Trump before everything else – even our precious NHS.”The pharma sector’s negotiations with the UK government over drug pricing under a voluntary scheme broke down without an agreement in late August. Since then, MSD has abandoned plans for a £1bn research centre in London and AstraZeneca and New York-based Eli Lilly have paused projects, taking total pharma investments that are on hold or cancelled to nearly £2bn since the start of this year.One industry source said: “We are relieved to see a recognisable change in sentiment and language from August.” More

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      Why Tony Blair just can’t kick the habit of imperial interference in the Middle East | Oliver Eagleton

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      “There are two types of politician,” Tony Blair observed in 2012. “Reality creators and reality managers.” While postwar politics was generally a matter of steady management, he claimed, the emerging order called for more creativity, “both in the economy and foreign policy”. Only a particular type of visionary leader was fit for the task.More than a decade later, Blair has now joined forces with the pre-eminent reality-creator, Donald Trump, to draft a hallucinatory 20-point plan for Gaza. It aims to turn the devastated Strip into what seems to resemble a colonial protectorate: cleansed of armed conflict, buzzing with development projects and a “special economic zone” through which foreign capital can flow, and overseen by an international “board of peace” with Trump himself as chair.The authors of the programme have not explained how they intend to impose it on a resistant population, or how they will persuade Hamas to disarm and concede defeat. So there is a high likelihood that the Blair-Trump fantasy will remain just that. Whatever its fortunes, though, it is a clear reflection of our historical moment, representing the most recent mutation of an imperial worldview that has already left a trail of destruction across the Middle East.For Blair, “the economy and foreign policy” have long been entwined. His military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan tried to spread the virtues of the market to supposedly backward nations. The privatisation of resources created new investment opportunities, while a wide range of profiteers, from weapons dealers to security contractors, made a killing off the wars themselves.Upon leaving office in 2007, Blair immediately took up a post as Middle East envoy for the so-called Quartet: the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia. His work in Palestine displayed the same unerring faith in free enterprise. He proposed a series of “industrial parks” to attract foreign investment, advocated eccentric agribusiness and tourism schemes, and promoted other ventures that raised questions about possible conflicts of interest: while being paid £2m per year as a JP Morgan adviser, for example, he was accused of using his Quartet role to advance the interests of JP Morgan clients. (Blair denied the claims, insisting he did not know about the links between the bank he worked for and the companies it served.)As envoy, Blair often bypassed or rejected political solutions – fighting vigorously against Palestinian attempts to win statehood at the UN – and instead treated economics as the route to progress. His diplomatic activities seemed to be based on the notion that peace would naturally follow prosperity. If securing the latter was the task of the intrepid statesman, then strong ties to the business sector could perhaps be framed as an asset.Yet Blair’s tenure in the Middle East brought no diminution of the conflict. In 2012, a senior Palestinian official gave a succinct assessment of his record: “Useless, useless, useless.” Still, undeterred by failure and fond of dramatic political comebacks, the former prime minister now appears to be seeking to apply the same logic to Gaza. Since the early months of the war, he has reportedly been crafting his plan for the “day after”.Staff from his thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change (TBI), participated in a project that appeared to endorse ethnic cleansing in the territory and outlined what could be built atop its mass graves: a “Trump riviera”, an “Elon Musk smart manufacturing zone”, “regional datacentres”. Although Blair’s organisation claimed it had no meaningful involvement in the plan, and rejected the idea of displacing Palestinians, there are a number of continuities with his own blueprint, details of which were soon leaked to the press.Drawn up with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the 21-page document suggests reconstructing Gaza through “public-private partnerships”, forged by a “commercially driven authority, led by business professionals and tasked with generating investable projects with real financial returns”. Hamas would be demobilised and a small unelected executive would be installed. This would include Blair himself in a prominent role, plus “leading international figures with executive and financial expertise” and “at least one qualified Palestinian representative (potentially from the business or security sector)”. An international stabilisation force would meanwhile put down “threats to public order”.View image in fullscreenBlair met Kushner and Trump in the White House on 27 August and his proposals got a warm welcome from the president. They have since been refined and repackaged as the Trump “peace plan”. As with previous versions of the initiative, the emphasis is on creating a Gaza that is “conducive to attracting investment”, and in which Israel will continue to reign supreme. Blair is primed to take charge of governing the Strip until some unspecified future point when day-to-day administration may be returned to a “reformed” Palestinian Authority.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe practical issues are glaring. Which states would be irresponsible enough to send troops to serve this novel dictatorship? How can it hope to sustain itself with no mandate nor legitimacy? Even more striking, however, is the extent to which the plan signals the overlap between Blair’s ethos and Trump’s.It is not unreasonable to suggest that Blair might see a business opportunity beneath the rubble of Gaza. To figure out who may benefit, we can look at his network of paymasters. Since 2021, Larry Ellison, founder of the tech company Oracle, has donated or pledged £257m to the TBI. The thinktank has, in turn, transformed into what one commentator has called an “Oracle dealership”: promoting the company’s software around the globe, including in impoverished countries where it has been criticised for potentially “trapping” and “indebting” users. Ellison is also a prominent supporter of Israel who has given millions to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and, according to Haaretz, once offered Benjamin Netanyahu a seat on the Oracle board. Were Blair to rule over Gaza – perhaps establishing “regional datacentres” in line with the TBI-linked plan – it is possible that Ellison could wield major influence.The TBI has also received huge sums from the authoritarian regimes of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, while Blair has been given a lucrative advisory contract by the UAE state-owned investment firm Mubadala. All three states have readily endorsed the plan for Gaza. Once the besieged enclave is opened for investment, they may well be first in line. Blair’s work for these petro-monarchies tallies with his involvement in the fossil fuel industry, having taken cash from a BP-led consortium, the oil company PetroSaudi and the South Korean UI Energy Corporation, which has interests in the Middle East. Given that Israel has recently granted new licences to explore for oil and gas off the Mediterranean coast, such connections could prove significant later down the line.In one sense, then, this “peace plan” could simply be read as an extension of Blair’s belief in market-led development. Yet this chapter in the annals of colonialism also has a uniquely Trumpian twist. Visions of a new world order that underpinned earlier regime-change projects are gone. Here politics is reduced to dealmaking, grand strategy to crude self-interest. The fusion of public power and private profit is complete. Blair may be creating new realities, but few would want to inhabit them.

      Oliver Eagleton is an associate editor at the New Left Review and author of The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right

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      We Americans love remaking British TV. Must the UK remake our odious politicians? | Dave Schilling

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      I’ve always wanted to visit the UK. This might sound absurd to you, considering I’m from California – home of sunshine, half-naked bodies and the studio where they film Jeopardy. What could possibly pull me to the cold, damp, gray shores of England? The oppressively brown food? The dodgy colonialist history? Tesco? No, it was the glowing box that vibrated with whatever passed for culture in my small town: television.British TV was an obsession in my house, via those purveyors of affordable, exotic entertainment at PBS. We’d get classy fare through the Masterpiece Theatre series, but also more downmarket comedies like Are You Being Served? (a variety of sexually obsessed retail clerks trip over each other) or Keeping Up Appearances (lower-middle-class oafs desperately wish they were posh). I had no concept of what people were saying in their thick accents or most of the jokes meant, especially the double entendres.But even the dumb shows seemed smart. I learned more about European history from Rowan Atkinson, Richard Curtis and Ben Elton’s Blackadder series than I ever did in school. British television, especially the comedies, assumed a certain futility to life. It probably won’t get better. In fact, it might get worse. Often. This is a tradition that carried over to other classic sitcoms such as I’m Alan Partridge and The Office, which I discovered in college. If it’s a small-town crime drama or a half-hour comedy, British TV is usually going to express something close to misery by the time the credits roll. In America’s land of good cheer and opportunity, this was like a salve of reality.My obsession with all things British (even the food) carried on into adulthood, but despite that abiding interest, I had never visited the UK until this year. I seemed to have picked the worst year imaginable. Or maybe the best. The country is in the midst of a political upheaval. Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform party is on the march, commanding the polls. Obviously, the first thing I did when I arrived was turn on the television to see how it compared to American media, which feels at all times like Jurassic Park after the electricity went out.In the US, we are obsessed with remaking British TV shows – The Office, Steptoe and Son, Absolutely Fabulous. But the British would rather remake our politicians. They’re just not as good at it.Farage is the English Trump, but only in the sense that he is dangerously unqualified for leadership and therefore believes he is actually qualified. He recently claimed that migrants were “eating swans” in parks. I can imagine a TV executive angrily shaking their fist at the ham-handed adaptation of Trump’s infamous dog comment. “Who would actually eat a swan? You don’t even get it!”Nigel Farage is just not the showman that Trump is, any more than Doctor Who is as flashy as Star Wars or Star Trek. British news is less single-mindedly fixated on him than we are with Trump. Because Farage is so tacky and second rate, it’s been easier for the UK media to shoo him away like a fly up until now. When I was in London this summer, it was the opposite of the wall-to-wall Trumpathon that is America. Maybe that’s why I found ITV’s Good Morning Britain so relaxing to watch. The noticeable lack of screaming or partisan rancor. The reassuring presence of former Labour politician and ex-Strictly Come Dancing competitor Ed Balls. Whatever it is, I came to love my daily dose of dry toast in TV form. One recent GMB episode featured a segment on an app designed to identify and catalog butterflies around the UK. It was sweet, until the presenter reminded the audience that this is important because butterflies are dying off due to the climate crisis. Even cheerful news segments need to remind you that life is a series of tiny hells.I did a few things besides watch TV, though. The Tate Modern is easily the best contemporary art museum I’ve ever been to. I think reading a newspaper in a pub at 11am is as civilized as life gets. I can’t tell if Waitrose is posh or a Trader Joe’s equivalent, but they had everything I needed, plus delicious cheeses I’ve never heard of. The Barbican Estate, where I stayed, is an architectural marvel that could never exist in a place like California. It’s purposefully difficult to get around, has an art gallery and a movie theater, and people crush bottles of wine openly in the courtyard long past bedtime. I found that people took tube etiquette so seriously that I wondered if not giving up your seat for an elderly person was now punishable by stoning. I’m sure there’s plenty of horrendous behavior in London, but I was so eager to enjoy myself that I didn’t even notice. And almost no one I met in London asked me, the dumb American, about Donald Trump. Almost.My one conversation about Trump took place in Whitechapel, a neighborhood known for a series of murders attributed to Jack the Ripper that is now home to a significant immigrant population – particularly people from Bangladesh. A sign was added to the Whitechapel tube station in Bengali, which upset Elon Musk (who is definitely not British) and assorted rightwing politicians obsessed with fighting multiculturalism. I was eager to have a proper British curry experience before flying back to LA and was given a recommendation for a restaurant in Whitechapel by my friend and co-creator of The Inbetweeners, Iain Morris (who is definitely British). I was asked very specifically not to name the restaurant, lest it become discovered by more brutish American tourists like myself. That’s what Dishoom is for, after all.After settling the bill for my meal, the waiter/proprietor asked me what I thought of “him.” The movie had not come out yet, so I realized “him” meant Trump. I said I was generally not a fan, that he would not be fond of a place like the restaurant we were in, and that I definitely did not vote for him. He chuckled, as though I had read him a joke written on a popsicle stick. “Every time an American comes in here and I ask if they voted for him, they say no,” he responded. I surmised that that’s because the people who did vote for him aren’t stopping into a curry house in Whitechapel on their UK vacation.The British and American political dilemmas can sometimes look eerily similar. Trump and Farage have both stuck around far longer than anyone expected. Anti-immigrant and anti-trans sentiment animate the right wings of both nations. The “unite the kingdom” rally feels like a hyper-charged Maga gathering. But, like the quality of our respective cheeses, we couldn’t be more different. Nihilism and a crazed impulse to start over from scratch animates both of our cultural schisms, but while in the US the face of populism is the frozen scowl of Trump, in Britain, it’s the vacuous grin of Farage. A recent feature in the New Yorker described the mood of the Reform party conference as jubilant. Farage is always smiling, which is either comforting to his sympathizers or terrifying for his detractors. Regardless, Reform is capturing Britain’s imagination precisely because of that smile.Labour and the Tories bumble around desperate to prove that they are the most serious, when what the nation seems to want is someone who admits that things aren’t great, but that the country (and the world) have a future. The future Reform offers is a terrifying one that looks a lot more like the worst aspects of modern America, but it’s a vision nonetheless. What afflicts both the US and the UK is a feeling of emptiness, of futility, and a growing realization that we’re all stuck. Technology, grand economic forces we don’t understand, and a dwindling social safety net have left the average citizen in a state of abandonment and isolation. The Democratic party and the Labour party just want things to go back to a mythical state of normalcy, hopelessly nostalgic and out of touch. This has pushed the dreamers, the malcontents and the futurists to the fringes. Maga and Reform seem nostalgic, but what they offer is not a return to anything, but a radical reshaping and perversion of the system that keeps our society functioning.When faced with the grim reality of British TV every day on my trip, I yearned for a bit of good ol’ Yankee razzle-dazzle – a dose of mindless optimism. I think maybe the most potent similarity between our two countries is that we could both use some of that right now.

      Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist More

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      Amid the anger and hate, this is the big question: can societies still summon empathy? | Keith Magee

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      Something is happening, and we see it on both sides of the Atlantic. On the surface, it is about flags, identity and political allegiance. But to me, as an American living in Britain, recent events reveal something deeper: both our societies are normalising hate ​and othering in ways that corrode not only our politics but our souls.The something is aggressions and micro-aggressions: a coarsening of everyday encounters. I have snapshots. Recently, at a celebrated creative hub in London, I twice endured blatant bias. My guests and I – the only all-Black table in the room – were left in the dark, literally. As night fell, every other table was given a lamp except ours. When I raised it with management, I was interrupted, dismissed and told it was an oversight. A Black staff member was sent to smooth things over​. An official later told me that while they had “a different view of what happened”, they accepted that this was “how [I] experienced it” and admitted it “fell short of [their] usual standards”. My Blackness was overlooked, diminished and dismissed – while whiteness was appreciated, affirmed and celebrated, in a space that loudly markets itself as a home of “belonging”.​The pendulum has swung back. Much more overt aggression is normalised in a way I haven’t seen in years. Recently in US airports and restaurants, I ​have been called the N-word: a word ​historically intended not ​just to insult, but to erase.These are not minor indignities. They are signs of a culture where suspicion and prejudice are no longer whispered but weaponised. In Colorado, three students were critically wounded after a school shooting. In Minnesota, political leaders were among those targeted in a mass attack by an assailant who compiled a sprawling “hitlist” of dozens of Democrats, though investigators noted he appeared to hold few consistent or coherent ideological beliefs. In Sweden, 10 students and staff members were killed in a tragic attack at an adult education centre in Örebro – a case in which police confirmed “there was nothing … to suggest he had acted on ideological grounds”. Here in Britain, far-right activity and asylum seeker protests have surged, fuelled by a combination of inflammatory rhetoric and relative silence from political leaders.What unites these threads is not ideology but a deficit of empathy. And without empathy, democracies falter.Martin Luther King Jr warned: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” Hatred, he knew, corrodes the hater as much as the hated. Love, by contrast, is the only force capable of transforming both. This is not abstract philosophy. It is lived truth.And the message of Jesus Christ was never about defending doctrines or drawing boundaries of purity. It was a message of radical love – love that crossed lines, embraced the despised and saw the soul beyond the sin. That is the love the world is starving for today.Rabbi Jonathan Sacks made the same case in his 2015 book Not in God’s Name: “We are all children of Abraham … God is calling us, Jew, Christian and Muslim, to let go of hate and the preaching of hate, and live at last as brothers and sisters … honouring God’s name by honouring his image, humankind.” His challenge was theological, yes, but also civic. Societies cannot thrive if they are built on grievance. Empathy must become a public practice woven into our schools, workplaces and laws. Politicians who thrive on division should be held accountable not only for what they say but for the cultures of cruelty they foster.Even in the US, where free speech is sacrosanct, presidents have acknowledged, rhetorically at least, that liberty cannot mean licence. “We must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry, and violence,” the Trump White House once declared. That statement should apply to every American citizen – bar none – and to every society that claims to be democratic.From Britain’s protests to the US’s violence, public theatre often drowns out deeper questions. The real issue is not which side shouts louder, but whether societies can still summon empathy in an age addicted to division. Free speech is vital for democracy – but without empathy and responsibility, it becomes a blunt instrument that wounds the vulnerable while shielding the powerful.Here in Britain, empathy would mean confronting racism where it hides in plain sight: in private clubs that celebrate whiteness while ignoring Blackness, and in everyday encounters where bias is excused as banter. It would mean reshaping our politics so grievance is not weaponised but grace is prioritised.This is not about sentimentality. Empathy is not naivety. It is an act of moral courage. It means refusing to define people solely by their worst moments. It means seeing the soul in the person across from us – even when their words wound.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionI feel outraged when a waiter – or anyone – calls me a nigger, because the word is meant to erase me. But I do not feel hatred. Hatred corrodes the soul. Outrage, when held rightly, becomes the fuel for truth-telling – for refusing to allow dignity to be diminished or injustice to be normalised. My hope is that even in the face of such ugliness, we can build a society where empathy does the work that hate once claimed: binding us together, not tearing us apart.I think often of my son. He is growing up in a world more toxic than the one I inherited. He will face choices about whether to meet cruelty with cruelty or to answer it with love. What I want him to know; what I want us all to know, is that empathy is not weakness. It is strength. It is the refusal to let hate dictate who we are. In the end, it is the only inheritance worth leaving behind.I think, too, of another child: Charlie Kirk’s son in the US. One will grow up without his father; my own will grow up watching what that boy’s father stood for. Two boys, oceans apart, but inheriting the same question: will we break the cycle of hate? My prayer is that, in different ways, both will come to know this: the only way forward, the only way to heal what is broken, is love.

      Keith Magee is a theologian and author, and chairs the Guardian Foundation More

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      Trump has dragged the US to the abyss and Nigel Farage would do the same to Britain. Here’s how to stop him

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      The march towards the darkness is becoming a sprint. In the US, warnings about the autocratic ambitions of Donald Trump that were once dismissed as hyperbole and hysteria now seem, if anything, too mild. Faster than most imagined, he has moved to weaken institutional checks on his power – whether the courts, the universities, the civil service or the press – and now has set to work gagging his critics, even, it seems, to outlaw large swathes of the opposition.This week saw the suspension by a major broadcasting network, Disney-owned ABC, of a late-night talkshow, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, following remarks Kimmel had made about the killing of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk. Kimmel did not criticise Kirk himself – an act now considered all but blasphemous in the US – but rather Republicans’ reaction to his murder, especially their eagerness to “score political points from it”.That was enough to prompt Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission – the body that grants, or revokes, licences to broadcast – to come on like a wannabe Tony Soprano, all but cracking his knuckles as he said: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” The threat worked: Kimmel is off the air.Of course, this is no one-off. Trump is also trying to cow the US’s biggest newspaper, filing a $15bn lawsuit against the New York Times, accusing it of “spreading false and defamatory content”. The NYT has the resources to resist, but smaller US papers will have got the message. They could hardly be blamed if they now pull their journalistic punches, if only because they do not have the money to pay for a protracted legal battle against a billionaire president.But the Trump administration is not confining its assault to the media. The Kirk killing has handed it an opportunity to crack down on dissent itself. Witness the promise Trump aide Stephen Miller made this week – on the Charlie Kirk podcast – to take on those left-of-centre organisations whose “messaging” is “designed to trigger and incite violence”. It is hardly a stretch to assume that Miller will define that category very broadly, so that it sweeps up most of those who express opposition to Trump. If that seems alarmist, recall that, even before Kirk was killed, Miller was calling the Democratic party a “domestic extremist organisation”.View image in fullscreenIn the UK, we like to think we can watch all this with, if not smug distance, then a measure of relief. It’s true that we are a long way from the precipice to which Trump has taken the US. But last week between 110,000 and 150,000 Britons took to the streets of London, heeding the summons of the rightwing agitator and serial convict who goes by the name of Tommy Robinson.It’s worth stressing that this was not a Reform or Conservative rally that was hijacked by Robinson. This was his event. Britons know who Robinson is and what he represents – and yet up to 150,000 of them marched behind him. They were undeterred by those who had labelled it a far-right protest and, indeed, by the racist rhetoric that came from the platform. Britain has an admirable history of confining the far right to the margins, ensuring that it had not, until now, demonstrated this kind of strength in numbers. So last Saturday should be understood as a watershed.Not least because of one speech in particular. Elon Musk, via video link, told the crowd “violence is coming to you. You either fight back or you die.” He added that the Labour government, democratically elected a year ago, needed to be brought down. This was one of the most powerful men in the world issuing a call that may not have broken the law but which seemed to give approval in advance for rightwing political violence in Britain.And yet the British prime minister did not rush to condemn this incendiary intrusion into our politics. Indeed, Downing Street said nothing at all until prompted by reporters’ questions, and MPs’ demands, the following day. We often fault those guilty of overreaction. But, at a moment like this, underreaction is the greater sin.The polls are telling a very stark story. Absent a dramatic shift, a party of nationalist populism is on course to beat both Labour and the Conservatives at the next election, and very probably form the next government. Nigel Farage may be no fan of Tommy Robinson, but he is Trump’s loudest UK cheerleader; he does not condemn the current US gallop towards authoritarianism but rather stands alongside those responsible for it. If we want to prevent Farage doing to Britain what Trump is doing to the US, we need to halt the advance of Reform.The first move in that effort is to puncture Farage’s core claim: that he somehow speaks for the British people, that his views reflect the “commonsense” views of the silent majority. It’s not true. On issue after issue, including those that define him, Farage is an outlier, articulating the positions of a noisy but often small minority.He was the chief advocate of Brexit, a decision so calamitous that only 31% now say it was the right move. Indeed, a healthy majority, 56%, favour its reversal and want to rejoin the EU. Farage is on the wrong side of that number.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe has long banged the drum for leaving the European convention on human rights. If you read the rightwing papers, you would assume that is now a majority view. Wrong. Support for staying in the ECHR is close to 60% and has actually increased as the subject has been debated. Farage is out of step with the British people.But surely on the issue he has made his own, immigration, he is in tune with the public? After all, Labour seems to have built its entire political strategy on that assumption. And yet, the numbers tell a different story. While 81% of Reform voters believe migrants have undermined Britain’s culture, only 31% of Britons in general believe that. Ask about the effect of migrants on the economy and you get a similar picture. It’s Reform that is badly out of touch.You can keep doing this – and Labour must, pointing out that Farage speaks for the fringes not the centre. Britons don’t support handing Afghan refugees back to the Taliban, as Farage advocates. They do not agree that Britain has become North Korea – and they don’t regard as a patriot someone who sits in Washington and tells a committee of American politicians that we have. They don’t reply to the question, “Which world leader do you most admire?”, with the words “Vladimir Putin”, as Farage did. And nor do they think that the Liz Truss measures that sent the UK economy spiralling represented “the best Conservative budget since 1986”, to quote Nigel Farage.Reform’s opponents need to expose every one of these gaps between Farage and the electorate, recasting Farage as a figure of the fringes. But this can’t be a task for Labour or the Liberal Democrats alone. Any party that claims to value democracy, including what remains of the Conservatives, and that sees how swiftly nationalist populism leads to authoritarianism, needs to engage in the same effort and fast. We all do. As Americans are learning to their cost, you cannot delay – otherwise the freedoms you thought would last for ever can vanish, in the blink of an eye.

      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist. His new nonfiction book, The Traitors Circle: The Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them (£25), is available from the Guardian Bookshop at £22 More

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      What does Donald Trump think free speech means? – podcast

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      Archive: CBS, Good Morning America, The Charlie Kirk show, ABC News, Katie Miller Pod, CBS Austin, PIX11 News, Fox News
      Listen to Science Weekly’s episode on the data behind political violence
      Listen to Politics Weekly, all about Trump’s state visit to the UK
      Purchase Jonathan Freedland’s new book, The Traitor’s Circle, here
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      Starmer and Trump to hold talks as PM warned UK faces ‘huge dilemma’ over relationship with US – UK politics live

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      Donald Trump and his wife Melania posed for a photograph with King Charles and Queen Camilla in the grand grand Green Corridor at Windsor Castle before Trump headed to the PM’s country residence Chequers, PA Media reports. PA says:
      The four posed for a joint photograph together in the atmospheric corridor which is lined with gilt edged historic paintings and antique furniture.
      Outside at the sovereign’s entrance, the Kkng said a solo goodbye with Trump shaking his hands warmly and placing his other hand on top. The president said “thank you very much, everybody. He’s a great gentleman and a great King”.
      The Windsor Castle detachment of The King’s Guard turned out in the Quadrangle outside to mark Trump’s departure. Although Melania attended the official parting of ways, she is in fact staying behind to carry out joint engagements, first with Camilla, and then the Princess of Wales.
      She was joining the Queen for a tour of Queen Mary’s Doll’s House and the Royal Library in Windsor Castle.
      President Trump is now leaving Windsor Castle. He will be flying to Chequers by helicopter.Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, has thanked King Charles for what he said at the state banquet last night strongly supporting the Ukrainian cause.In a post on social media, Zelenskyy said:
      I extend my deepest thanks to His Majesty King Charles III @RoyalFamily for his steadfast support. Ukraine greatly values the United Kingdom’s unwavering and principled stance.
      When tyranny threatens Europe once again, we must all hold firm, and Britain continues to lead in defending freedom on many fronts. Together, we have achieved a lot, and with the support of freedom-loving nations—the UK, our European partners, and the US—we continue to defend values and protect lives. We are united in our efforts to make diplomacy work and secure lasting peace for the European continent.
      In his speech Charles said:
      Our countries have the closest defence, security and intelligence relationship ever known. In two world wars, we fought together to defeat the forces of tyranny.
      Today, as tyranny once again threatens Europe, we and our allies stand together in support of Ukraine, to deter aggression and secure peace. And our Aukus submarine partnership, with Australia, sets the benchmark for innovative and vital collaboration.
      Donald Trump is likely to become “much more aggressive” towards Russia in support of Ukraine, one of his allies has claimed.Christopher Ruddy, CEO of Newsmax, a rightwing news organisation in the US, was a guest at the state banquet last night. In an interview with the Today programme, Ruddy, who has been a friend and informal adviser to the president for years, predicted that Trump would soon harden his stance against Russia. He said:
      President Trump is not against Ukraine, like some people might think, and he’s moved a long way in his posture. And I think we’re going to see much more aggressive action in the weeks and months ahead.
      Ruddy conceded that Trump was not in favour of sending US troops into action.
      I think the president is highly reluctant to put troops on the ground. That’s nothing to do with Ukraine. He just doesn’t like American troops put in harm’s way. He doesn’t like physical engagements. He’ll do these kinetic strikes from time to time, you saw that in Iran, but it’s still not really deploying American troops and putting them in a lot of risk.
      Instead, Trump sees this as “an economic battle”, Ruddy said.
      He’s been pushing for [lower oil prices]. He wants sanctions. He wants Nato countries to stop buying Russian oil. So he sees this in economic war, as a businessman.
      Asked about Trump’s views on Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, Ruddy said Trump viewed him as “a bad guy, even though he won’t say that publicly”.Trump thought it was worth trying to win Putin round, Ruddy said. But Trump has now decided that’s “not going to work”, Ruddy claimed.
      Putin hasn’t talked to anyone. He hasn’t talked to any American president – reluctant, won’t do anything. So Trump looks at this and says, let me see if I can be his friend. I’ll reach out. I’ll be overly generous, I’ll be overly kind.
      And he tried that. I think he really honestly thought it was going to work.
      And I think he’s coming to the conclusion that it’s not going to work and that he needs to do [things] and that’s why he’s ramping up talk about tariffs and secondary tariffs on India and China.
      Four men who were arrested after images of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle have been bailed, PA Media reports. PA says:
      A 60-year-old man from East Sussex, a 36-year-old man from London, a 37-year-old man from Kent and a 50-year-old man from London were arrested on suspicion of malicious communications on Tuesday night after the stunt at the Berkshire royal residence, Thames Valley police (TVP) said.
      They were released on conditional bail on Wednesday night until December 12 while inquiries continue, according to the force.
      “Those arrested are being investigated for a number of possible offences including malicious communications and public nuisance,” a spokesperson for TVP said.
      The nine-minute film created by British political campaign group Led By Donkeys went over the history of the US president’s links to Epstein, including the recent release by US legislators of documents said to include a letter from Trump to the paedophile financier to celebrate his 50th birthday.
      The film was projected from a hotel room with a direct view over the castle as an act of “peaceful protest”, a Led By Donkeys spokesperson said on Wednesday.
      “My colleagues were arrested for malicious communications, which seems ridiculous, because we’ve done 25 or 30 projections before, no-one’s ever been arrested,” the spokesperson told PA.
      “So suddenly, because it’s Trump, you get this reaction, which is surprising, disappointing and very heavy-handed from police. I think they’ve been arrested for embarrassing Donald Trump.”
      Back to Nick Clegg (see 8.56am), and this is what the former deputy PM told the Today programme about why he was not over-impressed by the US tech investments in the UK that have been announced alongside the state visit. He said:
      Of course it’s great there’s investment in the UK, and it’s better still that a young, London-based company like Nscale is involved.
      But these really are crumbs from the Silicon Valley table.
      If you consider that the total compute capacity in the UK is estimated to be around 1.8 gigawatts, withI’ve read ambitions to reach six gigawatts by 2030. Well, that is about the same as one single data centre being built by my former employer Meta in Louisiana.
      And so I just think some sort of perspective needs to be applied to all the hype that comes from the government and the tech companies at times like this, especially when we are never going to compete with the Chinese and America on infrastructure. We’re never going to develop our own frontier foundation models – the base layer of the AI industry.
      Where we can complete is how you deploy AI in the workplace innovatively through new applications and so on.
      And, crucially, none of this does anything to deal with our perennial Achilles heel in technology in the United Kingdom, which is we’re a very innovative place, with great entrepreneurs, scientists, people who create new companies. But the moment those companies start developing any momentum, they have to go to Palo Alto, to the VC [venture capital] firms there to get money. They then say, well, you’ve got to move to the West Coast if you’re going to take our money.
      So not only do we import all their technology, we export all our good people and good ideas as well.
      And that’s why I just think it’s worth keeping some of the hyperbole at moments like this in context.
      Clegg says everyone in the UK was using phones designed in America, run with US software and US operating systems, with the data stored on American cloud infrastructure
      I sometimes wonder how we would react as a body politic if all that infrastructure, all of that technology that we depend on for every sort of minute detail of our lives, were produced by the French. I think there’d be absolute uproar from Nigel Farage and others.
      Yet because of the very close partnership we’ve had with the United States, understandably so in the cold war period, I think we’ve been quite relaxed about this very heavy dependency … both in the public and the private sector, on American technology.
      Here is a Guardian explain on what the US-UK tech deal actually involves.Jennifer Rankin is the Guardian’s Brussels correspondent.Keir Starmer’s government is expected to soon begin talks with the EU to negotiate Britain’s entry into the EU’s €150bn (£130bn) defence loans scheme.The negotiations can start because EU member states on Wednesday agreed a negotiating mandate for the European Commission, but must conclude quickly if British companies are to be involved.The scheme, called Security Action for Europe (Safe), provides EU member states with cheap EU-backed loans to finance defence equipment, either for their armies or for Ukraine. The UK is not applying for a loan, but would like the biggest possible role for British companies in winning contacts.The first loans are expected to be disbursed in early 2026, with member states due to submit spending plans to the commission by the end of November.Europe minister Nick Thomas-Symonds made clear the deadline was on his mind when he spoke at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Asked by politics professor Anand Menon whether the UK could miss out on the first round, he said:I profoundly hope not … But my sense on this is that you’re absolutely right to emphasise the deadline.The Guardian reported this week that France has called for a 50% ceiling on the value of UK components in projects financed by Safe. The final EU negotiating mandate leaves the point vague, giving EU negotiators flexibility.The EU and UK must also negotiate a British entry fee to cover administrative costs. EU sources have suggested the fee will be linked to the level of British participation.Asked about the French position, Thomas-Symonds said the UK and EU were in a live negotiation, without commenting on details. He said:
      The bigger picture here is the real importance, when we have seen the return of war to our continent, that what we are doing is making sure we don’t fragment European defence production at this moment.
      Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, has been accused of putting lives at risk by the anti-slavery watchdog.Yesterday Mahmood said the use of modern slavery legislation to block deportations of migrants made a “mockery of our laws”. Rajeev Syal and Diane Taylor have the story.Today the independent anti-slavery commissioner Eleanor Lyons condemned the Home Secretary’s comments. She told Radio 4 comment like this “have a real-life impact on victims of exploitation, who may now be more scared to come forward and talk about what’s happened to them”.She went on:
      The Home Office are the deciders in this country on whether someone is a victim of modern slavery. They have the final decision-making.
      Both the House of Commons and the House of Lords select committees have looked at this issue in recent years, and they found there’s no misuse of the system.
      It puts vulnerable lives at risk when the Home Secretary is claiming that is the case.
      The ABC has been barred from attending Donald Trump’s press conference near London this week after a clash between the broadcaster’s Americas editor, John Lyons, and the president in Washington DC over his business dealings, Amanda Meade reports.Good morning. It’s day two of the state visit and, after the pomp, today we’re on to the policy. Donald Trump is leaving Windsor Castle and heading for Chequers where he will have private talks with Keir Starmer before the two leaders hold a press conference.In his speech at the state banquet last night, Trump delivered used some uncharacteristically sophisticated and lovely metaphors to describe the US/UK relationship. He said:
      We’re joined by history and faith, by love and language and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny.
      We’re like two notes in one chord or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really meant to be played together.
      Starmer defends his use of flattery diplomacy with Trump on the grounds that it delivers for Britain and, with No 10 announcing US investments in the UK worth £150bn there is evidence to suggest it’s working.But, to return to Trump’s analogy, there are others who suspect that, if anything is being “played” in all of this, it’s us.On the Today programme this morning Nick Clegg came close to expressing this view. As a former Lib Dem deputy prime minister in the 2010-15 coalition government, and a former president of global affairs at Meta, he is very well placed to comment on the relationship. Clegg told Today that the AI investments being anounced for the UK were “crumbs from the Silicon Valley table”. He said he thought the UK had become over-dependent on American technology. And he went on:
      Because of the very close partnership we’ve had with the United States, understandably so in the cold war period, I think we’ve been quite relaxed about this very heavy dependency … both in the public and the private sector, on American technology.
      I just so happen to believe that is now changing because the rupture – notwithstanding the pomp and ceremony of the state visit by Donald Trump this week – the transatlantic rupture, in my view, is real.
      I think the Americans – and we’ve been on notice for this for ages – are turning their attention to the Pacific. They have much less attachment to the transatlantic relationship.
      So my view is, over time, British governments need to learn to ask themselves different questions to how we can roll out the red carpet to American investment, welcome as that is. We need to ask ourselves questions about how we can develop and grow … our own technology companies to the size the need to be.
      Clegg said the UK faced “a huge dilemma”.
      We’ve got to learn, technologically, as much as in so many other walks of life, to stand more on own two feet, rather than just cling on to Uncle Sam’s coattails.
      While that served us well for a while, I think that’s no longer going to be the paradigm that works for us going forward.
      Today I will be focusing mostly on the Trump visit, although I will cover some other UK politics too. Here is the agenda for the day.10am: Donald Trump leaves Windsor CastleMorning: Melania Trump and Queen Camilla visit Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House in Windsor and Frogmore Gardens10.45am: Trump is due to arrive at Chequers, where he will hold bilateral talks with Keir Starmer. The two leaders are also speaking at an event for business leaders, and viewing items from the Winston Churchill archive at the mansion, the official country residence of the PM. And there will be a parachute display by the Red Devils.Around 2.30pm: Starmer and Trump hold a press conference at Chequers.If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. More

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      I quit the US and Britain seemed like a sanctuary from Trump’s Maga movement. Now I wonder, for how long | Emma Brockes

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      This time last year, I had just moved back to Britain from the US and was enjoying the almost universal envy of American friends. While they were looking down the barrel of a second Trump presidency with its guarantee of chaos and division, we had elected Keir Starmer by a landslide and were feeling pretty pleased with ourselves. I remember people congratulating me on the prescience of my move, which I absolutely took even though politics hadn’t been part of my decision (not least because, for most of 2024, I had assumed Trump would lose). Anyway, here we are a year later and who’s laughing now?I guess the answer to that is Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party, which has somehow managed to harness the anger, disappointment and shame felt by large numbers of people who voted for and were then let down by Brexit, and are now in search of another fire to light. To this extent, the roots of the rightwing march last weekend and the rise of Reform generally feel broadly of a piece with their US antecedents: a case, at least in part, of people clutching at anything that promises to rip up a system that has serially failed to reward them. What has felt shocking to many of us this year, however, is how quickly the political landscape seems to have changed in this country, and how a leader as frivolous as Farage could get anyone to follow him anywhere, let alone in the direction of No 10.And by frivolous, I don’t mean in the Trump/Boris Johnson style. You can despise those men while recognising their talent as mass communicators. Farage by contrast is a jackass, a grinning fool roundly mocked to his face by Democrats in Congress earlier this month when he showed up, at the invitation of Republicans, to give evidence before a House judiciary committee on free speech. (Smirking in a way that seemed to poke fun at lingering American assumptions that a British accent makes you cleverer, Jamie Raskin, a Democratic congressman from Maryland, prefaced his remarks to Farage with a sardonic hat tip to the MP’s “erudition”.)Farage didn’t organise the ‘unite the kingdom’ rally on Saturday, of course; that was Tommy Robinson, the former BNP member with convictions for violence, drug possession and fraud – facts that, British broadcasters were at pains to point out on Monday morning, shouldn’t tar all those who showed up at his march with the same brush. Americans will recognise this as a pivot-point: a parallel moment to that period of Trump’s rise in popularity during which his supporters were given endless sympathetic profiles in the US national press, and invited to explain why following a man who said monstrous things didn’t make them in the least bit venal or monstrous.Meanwhile, the whiplash speed of Reform and Robinson’s rise means that the country Trump is visiting this week is seemingly very different to the one he went into business with in January. There may be a moment when the US president pauses to admire his own work, and he will surely be gratified to see British white nationalists gaining ground. But he is also a man who abhors and is quick to distance himself from “losers” – a category into which, arguably, his pal the prime minister currently falls, and who we can assume he will drop as quickly as he embraced him.For the rest of us, it is a question of waiting to see how much traction our own version of the Maga movement will have. There are crucial differences between the two countries that leave certain large constituencies who came out in the US for Trump without direct British equivalents. British white nationalism nods to the Christian church as an influence, but evangelical Christianity has no purchase in a country where, historically, foxhunting is a bigger wedge issue than abortion. And I can’t see JD Vance’s pronatalist leanings, rooted in his fanatical Catholicism, being much of a goer here, either. In fact – and this may be pure jingoism on my part – Vance strikes me as the type of American who even Britons on the far right might regard instinctively as a creepy little piece. On the other hand, if enough people are willing to pledge allegiance to a thug or an ambitious pub bore, these are differences that may hardly matter.

      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist More

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      Donald Trump to meet the king as protesters gather in London and Windsor – UK politics live

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      Good morning. Official Britain is laying out the red carpet for Donald Trump today. It is the first full day of his unprecedented state visit, and he will spend it with King Charles at Windsor Castle enjoying the finest pageantry the nation can lay on. Keir Starmer, like other Western leaders, has concluded that the key to getting positive outcomes from Trump is flattery and shameless sucking up, and (not for the first time) the royal family is being deployed to this end.But civic Britain will also have its say on Trump today, and – perhaps mindful of his obsession with big crowds and his (supposed) love for free speech – there will be protests all over the country, with the main one in London. When Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president in the Trump’s first administration, was asked he felt about being booed one night when he attended the theatre, he said that was “the sound of freedom”. Trump’s response to protesters is much darker. But there is almost no chance of his hearing “the sound of freedom” today; his state visit is taking place entirely behind closed doors.I will be focusing largely on the state visit today, but I will be covering non-Trump UK politics too.Here is our overnight story about Trump arriving in the UK.Here is Rafael Behr’s Guardian about the potential flaws in Starmer’s obsequious approach to handling the US president.And here is an Rafael’s conclusion.
      Downing Street denies there is a choice to be made between restored relations with Brussels and Washington, but Trump is a jealous master. Fealty to the super-potentate across the Atlantic is an all-in gamble. There is an opportunity cost in terms of strengthening alliances closer to home, with countries that respect treaties and international rules.
      That tension may be avoided if Trump’s reign turns out to be an aberration. He is old. Maybe a successor, empowered by a moderate Congress, will reverse the US republic’s slide into tyranny. It is possible. But is it the likeliest scenario in a country where political violence is being normalised at an alarming rate? What is the probability of an orderly transfer of power away from a ruling party that unites religious fundamentalists, white supremacists, wild-eyed tech-utopian oligarchs and opportunist kleptocrats who cast all opposition in shades of treason?
      These are not people who humbly surrender power at the ballot box, or even run the risk of fair elections. They are not people on whose values and judgment Britain should be betting its future prosperity or national security.
      Here is the timetable for the day.11.55am: Donald Trump arrives at Windsor Castle by helicopter. His programme than includes a carriage procession through grounds (at 12.10pm), a ceremonial welcome (at 12.20pm), a visit to Royal Collection exhibition (at 2.15pm), a tour of St George’s Chapel (at 3pm) and a beating retreat ceremony and flypast (at 4.20pm).2pm: Anti-Trump speakers address a rally at Portland Place in London, before staging a march to Parliament Square.Evening: Fox News broadcasts an interview with Trump.8.30pm: Trump attends the state banquet at Windsor Castle.If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.As the Guardian reports, the long-coveted deal to slash US steel and aluminium tariffs to zero was shelved on the eve of Donald Trump’s state visit to BritainThe Liberal Democrats say this shows Trump is an unreliable partner. In a statement Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said:
      It looks like the government has thrown in the towel instead of fighting to stand up for the UK steel industry.
      We were told US tariffs on UK steel would be lifted completely, now that’s turned out to be yet another promise Trump has reneged on.
      It just shows Trump is an unreliable partner and that rewarding a bully only gets you so far.
      The best way to protect our economy is to stand with our allies in Europe and the Commonwealth and end Trump’s damaging trade war for good.
      A reader asks:
      Why no mention on the political blog of the bill to scrap the 2 child cap which successfully passed the first stage in the House of Commons yesterday?
      Because it was a 10-minute rule bill, from the SNP MP Kirsty Blackman, that won’t be further debated, won’t be voted on, won’t go anywhere, and won’t have any influence on government thinking.There was a vote yesterday under the 10-minute rule procedure, which allows a backbench MP every to propose a bill to the house. Yesterday Blackman proposed the bill, and the Tory MP Peter Bedford argued against it. There was then a vote on whether “leave be given to bring in” the bill and that passed by 89 votes to 79. And that is it. With no further time set aside for Blackman’s bill, it disappears into a parliamentary black hole.Sometimes I cover 10-minute rule proceedings because they can reveal something about how much parliamentary support there is for a particular propostion. But there was quite a lot else on yesterday. And it was Lib Dems, SNP MPs, independents and a few Labour leftwingers voting for the Blackman bill – all people whose supprt for removing the two-child benefit cap is well known.Lucy Powell has hit out at the “sexist” framing of her deputy Labour leadership campaign, with people claiming she and her rival, Bridget Phillipson, are standing as “proxies” for two men, Aletha Adu reports.Most of Donald Trump’s policies horrify progressives and leftwingers in Britain, including Labour party members and supporters, but Keir Starmer has said almost nothing critical about the Trump administration because he has taken a view that maintaining good relations with the White House is in the national interest.In an article in the Guardian today, Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has urged Starmer to be more critical. He says:
      I understand the UK government’s position of being pragmatic on the international stage and wanting to maintain a good relationship with the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Faced with a revanchist Russia, Europe’s security feels less certain now than at any time since the second world war. And the threat of even higher US tariffs is ever present.
      But it’s also important to ensure our special relationship includes being open and honest with each other. At times, this means being a critical friend and speaking truth to power – and being clear that we reject the politics of fear and division. Showing President Trump why he must back Ukraine, not Putin. Making the case for taking the climate emergency seriously. Urging the president to stop the tariff wars that are tearing global trade apart. And putting pressure on him to do much more to end Israel’s horrific onslaught on Gaza, as only he has the power to bring Israel’s brazen and repeated violations of international law to an end.
      Khan also says he is in favour of Londoners protesting against Trump to “tell President Trump and his followers that we cannot be divided by those who seek to sow fear.”Khan and Trump have a long history of slagging each other off. (Khan is also a Muslim, who may or may not be relevant to why Trump singles him out for special criticism.)On the Today programme this morning Bryan Lanza, a Trump ally who worked for the president during his first campaign for the White House, was asked if Trump would be bothered by comments like those from Khan. No, was the answer. Lanza explained:
      [Trump] receives enthusiasm everywhere he goes. There’s obviously opposition, but at the end of the day, those who are opposed, they don’t matter.
      The American people are the ones who voted this president in. They validated his vision for the country. And if Europe has a problem with the American people’s vision, that’s Europe’s problem. That’s not President Trump’s problem.
      As for the mayor of London, who cares? I mean, he’s nowhere relevant in any conversation that’s effective to any foreign policy that President Trump’s involved in. He’s just a local mayor. I think he should focus more on traffic, on handling the trash, than trying to elevate himself to the diplomatic stage.
      Amnesty International UK is supporting the anti-Trump protest in London today. Explaining why, its communications director, Kerry Moscogiuri, said:
      As President Trump enjoys his state banquet, children are being starved in Gaza in a US backed genocide. Communities of colour in the US are terrorised by masked ICE agents, survivors of sexual violence, including children, face being criminalised for getting an abortion and polarisation emanates from the White House at every opportunity.
      We’ve watched in despair as rights and freedoms have been stripped away across the US. But here too our protest rights are eroded, millions go without adequate access to food or housing, safe routes for those seeking asylum are shut down and our government is doing nothing meaningful to prevent and punish Israel’s genocide in Gaza. With racist bullies feeling empowered to abuse people on our streets, the grim and nihilistic politics of Trump could be on its way here.
      [The march] is about sending a clear message that the UK does not welcome Trump’s policies with open arms. We reject his anti-human rights agenda. We say not in our name, not on our watch.
      The police may have stopped campaigners projecting the Trump/Epstein picture onto the walls of Windsor Castle (see 9.37am), but this morning it is being driven around the streets of Windsor on the side of an advertisting van.Britain and the US have struck a tech deal that could bring billions of pounds of investment to the UK as President Donald Trump arrived for his second state visit, PA Media reports. PA says:
      Keir Starmer said the agreement represented “a general step change” in Britain’s relationship with the US that would deliver “growth, security and opportunity up and down the country”.
      The “tech prosperity deal”, announced as Trump arrived in the UK last night will see the UK and US co-operate in areas including artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing and nuclear power.
      It comes alongside £31bn of investment in Britain from America’s top technology companies, including £22bn from Microsoft.
      Microsoft’s investment, the largest ever made by the company in the UK, will fund an expansion of Britain’s AI infrastructure, which Labour sees as a key part of its efforts to secure economic growth, and the construction of the country’s largest AI supercomputer.
      Brad Smith, vice chairman and president of the firm, said it had “many conversations” with the UK government, including No 10, “every month”, adding that the investment would have been “inconceivable because of the regulatory climate” in previous years.
      “You don’t spend £22bn unless you have confidence in where the country, the government and the market are all going,” he said. “And this reflects that level of confidence.”
      Microsoft is backing tech firm Nscale to contribute towards developing a major data centre in the UK, which the company said would help build out Britain’s cloud and AI infrastructure.
      Asked how much electricity capacity would be required for the build-out and how this would be supplied, Smith said: “We already have the contracts in place for the power that will be needed for the investments that we’re announcing here.”
      Officials said the investment enabled by the tech partnership could speed up development of new medicines and see collaboration on research in areas such as space exploration and defence.
      Starmer said: “This tech prosperity deal marks a generational step change in our relationship with the US, shaping the futures of millions of people on both sides of the Atlantic, and delivering growth, security and opportunity up and down the country.”
      Here is the government news release about the deal.In the Commons yesterday MPs debated the decision to sack Peter Mandelson as the UK ambassador to Washington last week because new emails revealed that his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile sex trafficker, was closer than he had previously disclosed. One MP said Donald Trump must think the UK government “complete plonkers” for their handling of this because, by sacking Mandelson, Keir Starmer has put Epstein back at the top of the UK news agenda just ahead of Trump’s arrival. And Trump, of course, is deeply embarrassed about his own past friendship with Epstein.British protesters are doing their best to ensure Trump can’t ignore the story. Four people have been arrested after images ofTrump alongside Epstein were projected on to Windsor Castle last night. Reuters has more here.Starmer is not the only leader Trump will be meeting who has “sacked” a close ally over his Epstein links. King Charles, continuing an approach adopted by his mother, the late Queen, has excluded his brother, Prince Andrew, from playing a role in public life follow the scandal about Andrew’s own links with Epstein.Good morning. Official Britain is laying out the red carpet for Donald Trump today. It is the first full day of his unprecedented state visit, and he will spend it with King Charles at Windsor Castle enjoying the finest pageantry the nation can lay on. Keir Starmer, like other Western leaders, has concluded that the key to getting positive outcomes from Trump is flattery and shameless sucking up, and (not for the first time) the royal family is being deployed to this end.But civic Britain will also have its say on Trump today, and – perhaps mindful of his obsession with big crowds and his (supposed) love for free speech – there will be protests all over the country, with the main one in London. When Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president in the Trump’s first administration, was asked he felt about being booed one night when he attended the theatre, he said that was “the sound of freedom”. Trump’s response to protesters is much darker. But there is almost no chance of his hearing “the sound of freedom” today; his state visit is taking place entirely behind closed doors.I will be focusing largely on the state visit today, but I will be covering non-Trump UK politics too.Here is our overnight story about Trump arriving in the UK.Here is Rafael Behr’s Guardian about the potential flaws in Starmer’s obsequious approach to handling the US president.And here is an Rafael’s conclusion.
      Downing Street denies there is a choice to be made between restored relations with Brussels and Washington, but Trump is a jealous master. Fealty to the super-potentate across the Atlantic is an all-in gamble. There is an opportunity cost in terms of strengthening alliances closer to home, with countries that respect treaties and international rules.
      That tension may be avoided if Trump’s reign turns out to be an aberration. He is old. Maybe a successor, empowered by a moderate Congress, will reverse the US republic’s slide into tyranny. It is possible. But is it the likeliest scenario in a country where political violence is being normalised at an alarming rate? What is the probability of an orderly transfer of power away from a ruling party that unites religious fundamentalists, white supremacists, wild-eyed tech-utopian oligarchs and opportunist kleptocrats who cast all opposition in shades of treason?
      These are not people who humbly surrender power at the ballot box, or even run the risk of fair elections. They are not people on whose values and judgment Britain should be betting its future prosperity or national security.
      Here is the timetable for the day.11.55am: Donald Trump arrives at Windsor Castle by helicopter. His programme than includes a carriage procession through grounds (at 12.10pm), a ceremonial welcome (at 12.20pm), a visit to Royal Collection exhibition (at 2.15pm), a tour of St George’s Chapel (at 3pm) and a beating retreat ceremony and flypast (at 4.20pm).2pm: Anti-Trump speakers address a rally at Portland Place in London, before staging a march to Parliament Square.Evening: Fox News broadcasts an interview with Trump.8.30pm: Trump attends the state banquet at Windsor Castle.If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm BST at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog. More