THE BIG STORIES
Starmer wins praise for Trump meeting, after inviting US President to Scotland

📣 Sir Keir Starmer’s visit to the court of Donald Trump went well, say the reviews, even if they somehow all avoided the obvious “Sir Keir Charmer” headline. “Sir Keir Starmer might not have arrived in the Oval Office with the strongest of hands to play on Ukraine and trade, but he did have other aces up his sleeve,” says The Times (£). “What an unlikely bromance!” says the Mail.

• King Charles invited Trump back to the UK for a second state visit and, thanks to Trump flourishing the “private and confidential” letter before the cameras, we know the King suggested coming to Scotland for that trip, reminding Trump of his many business and family connections. (Herald) (Daily Record)

• The Guardian’s sketch of the scene is both entertaining and a little dark. “Starmer had calculated correctly that the puff and pageantry of a state visit with King Charles was bound to appeal to a man who, when he recently wrote on social media, “LONG LIVE THE KING!”, had only himself in mind.” (Guardian)

• Trump said the countries are working on a trade deal with the UK, and that the UK could escape tariffs if the countries secure one. That could be very good news for Scotland’s whisky industry. (Daily Record) (FT £)

• But one of Starmer’s objectives was to secure Trump’s support for US military backing of any Ukraine peace deal: on that, the US President vague. (The Times £)

• The BBC offers a useful roundup of the takeaways: among those not mentioned already, they include some of the optics, Trump’s praise for “tough negotiator” Starmer, Trump’s apparent acceptance of that Chagos deal and the US President apparently backing off his false claims Ukrainian President Zelensky was a “dictator”. (BBC)

• The Telegraph notes Trump offered his support to Nato, in “three vital words” that made Starmer’s visit a success. “Unlike Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, who emerged from the White House largely empty-handed on Monday, Sir Keir achieved clear wins,” the title says. (Telegraph)

IDEAS
From the weekly magazines

🗣️The Economist’s cover is a striking pastiche of a gangster film poster (echos of Reservoir Dogs? I’m sure a reader will spot whatever reference it is?) featuring Trump as “America’s Don Corleone”, with Putin, Jinping and others loitering in the background. “The rupture of the post-1945 order is gaining pace,” it writes in its leader, pointing to America siding with Russia and North Korea in a UN vote, warnings of NATO’s death and the fast-approaching “might-is-right world in which big powers cut deals and bully small ones”. The problem for us is it will make the world more dangerous. The trouble for the US is that it will it weaker and poorer, the newspaper says. (The Economist £)

🗣️Trump’s “mob boss geopolitics” are also flagged in The New Statesman by Katie Stallard, writing that the US proposal to Volodymyr Zelensky for Ukraine’s (supposed) mineral wealth was “an offer he could not refuse”. She adds: “When Zelensky demurred, insisting that he needed time to study the proposal, Trump and his senior officials began openly threatening the Ukrainian leader.” The deal was what amounts, in 2025, to a diplomatic victory for Ukraine. But Stallard is sceptical of its long-term benefit: “it is unrealistic to imagine that Trump will now be meaningfully more inclined to help defend Ukraine.[…] if past form is any guide the US president will soon return with more complaints and new demands.” (The New Statesman £)

🗣️In the same edition, Andrew Marr poses some interesting questions about Sir Keir Starmer’s discussions with Trump yesterday. “Keir Starmer is not popular,” he writes. “But who, on behalf of Britain, would you rather have negotiating with a man as unpredictable and as dangerous as Donald Trump? Recalling his past enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin, would you prefer Nigel Farage? Would you feel safer had Kemi Badenoch visited the White House this week? Or jolly Boris Johnson with his fist bump? Or fervent Liz Truss?” But Marr wonders if “transactional politics” with Trump may be “failing to recognise the creep of fascism in what used to be the world’s great fortress of democracy?” (The New Statesman £)

🗣️The Spectator takes a look at “Nigel’s gang” - the Reform team that has taken up residence in Millbank Tower in central London. It’s one of those curious insider-y pieces in which we learn Nigel Farage’s right-hand man lives on Pizza Express takeaways, the younger staff all rely on a fancy coffee machine and the informal press office is a pub nearby. Two common threads: they’re all men, and they appear all to smoke and drink. One source confirms to the magazine: “We’re much more serious” (than Ukip or the Brexit Party). “‘The difference is 14-hour days in the office rather than an eight-hour lunch’ explains a Reform figure (over a two-hour lunch). (The Spectator £)

AROUND SCOTLAND & THE UK

📣 Sir Keir Starmer has promised to look at the furious response to government plans to allow AI companies to use copyright material to train their systems. (The Independent)

📣 Kenyan police say they are confident of catching the killer of Scottish businessman Campbell Scott. (Daily Mail)

📣 The former general secretary of the Alba Party has been sacked for misconduct, with the party’s only MSP and leadership candidate Ash Regan attacking Kenny MacAskill’s acting leadership of the party. “We are leaderless and it is descending in to a little bit of chaos right now,” she said. (Sky News) (Holyrood)

📣 Almost half of England’s councils face bankruptcy without action to address a £4.6 billion Conservative-era deficit, the National Audit Office has warned. (Guardian)

📣 England’s GPs have struck a deal to allow patients to book more appointments online and ask to see their usual doctor, in an effort to end the 8am phone scramble for appointments. (BBC)

📣 A BBC review found “serious flaws” in the making of a documentary about Gaza after it emerged the 13-year-old narrator was the son of a Hamas official. (BBC)

AROUND THE WORLD

🌎 The Israeli military has published its first official account of its mistakes in the build-up to Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack. It concludes that its forces “failed in its mission to protect Israeli civilians”, misreading Hamas for years before the attack, which claimed 1,200 lives. (Times of Israel)

🌎 The death of actor Gene Hackman and his wife remains a mystery. Their bodies, and that of one of their dogs, were found at their home yesterday, having apparently died weeks earlier. (The Sun)

🌎 Hundreds of weather forecasters across the US have become the latest victims of DOGE cuts (AP)

🌎 Qatar Airways has insisted its crew acted appropriately when they placed the body of a woman who had died mid-flight next to an Australian couple who later said they were traumatised by the experience. (BBC)

🌎 Pop star Katy Perry is heading to space this spring as part of an all-women flight on a Blue Origin rocket. (BBC)

• That “planetary parade” - where seven planets align in the night sky - happens tonight. Miss it and there won’t be another until 2040. (Guardian)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 Scotland’s engineering companies have a bleak view of the immediate future, with an industry survey showing 17% of companies plan redundancies and a further 24% considering them. (The Herald £)

• But! Scottish business confidence is up, at least in the wider economy if not in their own immediate prospects. (Insider)

💰 Are America’s business leaders starting to have second thoughts about Donald Trump? Several have gone on the record in the last week to voice disquiet about Trump’s policy decisions, especially tariffs, which are making investments and other long-term planning difficult. (Semafor)

• The US economy is showing signs of strain from tariffs and spending cuts (New York Times £)

SPORT

⚽️ The Old Firm are close to a deal to allow each other’s away fans back into their grounds. Away fans have been banned for more than two years. (The Sun has the exclusive.)

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