UK politics: Trump suggests Starmer use army to tackle migration and says Putin ‘really let me down’ over Ukraine – as it happened | Politics

Key events

Early evening summary

For a full list of all the stories covered on the blog today, do scroll through the list of key event headlines near the top of the blog.

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Daniel Boffey has a good piece here on who sat next to whom at the state banquet last night.

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Badenoch says Trump has endorsed her stance on need for more oil and gas extraction from North Sea

I have beefed up the post at 3.36pm, where Donald Trump was urging the UK to drill for more oil and gas from the North Sea, to include the full quote. You may need to refresh the page to get it to appear.

Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, says she is not surprised by Trump’s answer. She posted this on social media.

Not surprised Trump was so emphatic. It’s all we spoke about last night. We have to get our oil and gas out of the North Sea.

I’m serious about energy security cutting energy bills. We have to make the most of our natural resources. It’s mad to leave billions of £ in there.

And she included this picture.

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This is from Shawn McCreesh from the New York Times’s blog.

It’s worth noting that President Trump hardly took any questions from American reporters who aren’t friendly to him. He gave two to Brian Glenn, the rightwing influencer who was seated with the president’s staff in the front row.

Brian Glenn was the reporter who asked about antifa terrorism (see 3.45pm), and the autopen non-scandal (see 3.47pm). He is also the reporter who famously berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the White House earlier this year for not wearing a suit.

For Starmer, taking questions only from reporters who are friendly to him is not really an option. No 10 tends to prioritise broadcast journalists at press conferences, and they tend to be neutral or right-leaning (GB News). The main national newspapers are disproportionately rightwing too.

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Scotch whisky industry calls for meeting with government after state visit ends with no concessions on whisky tariffs

Severin Carrell

Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor.

The Scotch whisky industry wants an urgent meeting with the government after Trump and Starmer failed to do a deal to lift the 10% tariff on Scottish whisky imports into the US.

There had been growing optimism Trump would lighten or lift the tariff after he met John Swinney, the Scottish first minister, in the Oval Office earlier this month.

The US bought more than £970m worth of Scotch and single malt whisky last year and Swinney was amongst the guests at the state visit banquet at Windsor castle on Wednesday evening, where he again lobbied Trump over the tariffs.

During their 50-minute meeting at the White House, attended by Peter Mandelson, the then British ambassador to Washington, Swinney had briefed the president the tariff was costing the sector nearly £20m a month in lost exports to the US and hundreds of jobs.

Distillers such as Isle of Harris have suspended production, laying off staff, in part because they expect a sharp fall in sales in the US due to adding the cost of the tariffs to their products.

It was also directly hitting jobs and exports from the US bourbon and whiskey industry: Scottish whisky distillers buy around $200m worth of barrels from the US each year to mature Scotch and single malt whiskies in.

Mark Kent, chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, said:

While we are grateful for the efforts from both sides to secure a positive outcome, no deal has been announced on whisky tariffs.

The Scotch whisky and American whiskey industries have both benefited from zero-tariff trade over the past three decades and we urge governments to reach a zero-for-zero deal as soon as possible – an outcome which will benefit industries and communities on both sides of the Atlantic.

In the meantime, it is essential that distillers be supported in our home market by the UK government. In the upcoming autumn budget, it is critical that no further harm is done to the industry and that the domestic tax burden on the industry falls, in the wake of mounting international tariff pressures.

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Starmer says Church of England has been ‘my church … all my life’, given he was christened, even though he’s now atheist

This is what Keir Starmer said at the press conference when he was asked by Beverley Turner from GB News if Britain was still a Christian country. He replied:

Look, I was christened. That is my church, has been all my life. That is wired into our informal constitution. Of course we celebrate many other faiths as well, and I’m really proud we are able to do so.

Starmer has described previously being brought up in the Church of England. In an interview when he was opposition leader, Starmer said he was atheist. He said:

I am not of faith, I don’t believe in god, but I can see the power of faith and the way it brings people together.

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Raphael Boyd

Raphael Boyd is a Guardian reporter.

Peter Mandelson has lost another job. The former ambassador to the US has now been stripped of his title as the high steward of Kingston upon Hull, as anger over his past ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein continue to grow.

Hull City councillors passed an emergency motion today to strip Mandelson of the honour – a ceremonial title bestowed by Hull council. Mandelson was made high steward in 2013, with the position having been vacant for almost four decades prior. The title had previously been held by his grandfather, Herbert Morrison, who was a prominent Labour during the war and in the subsequent Attlee government.

Following the Epstein revelations, which led to Mandelson being sacked as ambassador last week, Manchester Metropolitan University, of which he was the chancellor between 2016 and 2024, rescinding his honorary doctorate and commemorative medal following public pressure.

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Starmer/Trump press conference – snap verdict

There is a lot of talk these days about the need for people in politics to be able to “disagree agreeably”, to use a phrase popularised by Alastair Campbell, describing the approach he adopts with Rory Stewart in their Rest is Politics podcast. Since Campbell and Stewart are centrists, they don’t have a lot to disagree on anyway, but it’s a noble idea, and a good phrase. And now it turns out that Donald Trump seems to have adopted it too.

When Theresa May was PM, she had an excruciating press conference with Trump at Chequers when he half-heartedly played down an interview he had given to the Sun implying she he did not rate her much. The lack of repect was obvious. There was none of that today. The president did not try undermine Keir Starmer in any way, and although he acknowledged that they have a different view on Israel and Gaza, it was cordial and rational. Other potential disagreements did not arise, or were glossed over. Trump, unusually, was diplomatic.

This meant the news quotient was on the low side. On Russia, Trump dropped hints about a new initiative against Russia, but it was hard to tell how serious it was. His analysis of the conflict backed up what his friend Christopher Ruddy was telling the Today programme this morning. (See 10.11am.) There were no big announcements here.

The declaration that Trump wants to buy or lease Bagram airbase from the Taliban was certainly novel. (See 4.28pm.) But is that much more than fantasy? Perhaps he’s just floating this potential territorial acquisition because he has finally accepted that his plans to annex Canada and Greenland aren’t going anywhere.

Trump may have been at his most diplomatic, but that did not mean he had given up on shameless half-truths. His “Peter who?” response to the question about Mandelson will have caused much amusement at Westminster, and in the US his suggestion that Jimmy Kimmel was just fired for his ratings will be dismissed as a lie.

Starmer’s answers on most topics were predictable, but his declaration that the Church of England has been “my church … all my life” was not something I think he has said publicly before. He is an athiest, and his election last year even promoted a debate in religious circles about whether having an athiest PM was a problem. Half a day with a Maga president, and is Starmer finding his faith? Probably not. But it was interesting anwyay. I will post the full words shortly.

(If non-British readers find this confusing, it is worth pointing out that atheism and a loose allegiance to the Church of England are not at all incompatible.)

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Trump says he wants to US to regain Bagram air base in Afghanistan, implying Taliban may negotiate its handover

During the press conference Donald Trump said that the US is going to try to regain control of the Bagram air base in Afghanistan.

In response to a question about Ukraine, he said the US departure from Afghanistan under Joe Biden was a “total disaster”. He went on:

(We were) going to leave Afghanistan, but we were going to leave it with strength and dignity, and we were going to keep Bagram, the big air base, one of the biggest air bases in the world. We gave it to them (the Taliban) for nothing.

We’re trying to get it back, by the way. That could be a little breaking news. We’re trying to get it back, because they need things from us. We want that base back.

One of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.

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