During the Q&A there were two topics over which Donald Trump and Keir Starmer disagreed quite openly. One was Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London (see 2.44pm), and the other was wind turbines.

Trump has a near-obsessive hated for wind turbines, and this is what he said about them today.

Wind is the most expensive form of energy, and it destroys the beauty of your fields and your planes and your waterways. And look out there. There’s no windmills. But if you look in another direction, you see windmills.

When we go to Aberdeen, you’ll see some of the ugliest windmills you’ve ever seen. They’re the height of a 50-storey building.

And you can take 1,000 times more energy out of a hole in the ground this big. It’s called oil and gas, and you have it there the North Sea. This big – that nobody would even see.

The wind is intermittent, it doesn’t work. It’s extremely expensive. All the windmills are made in China. They used to be Germany and China, now they’re mostly in China. They all come out of China.

They say that the blades, which are carbon fibre, you can’t bury. You can’t bury. What are you going to do? Dump them in the ocean someplace?

And, remember, a windmill has a life of eight years, especially when they’re out in the salty sea, and they start to rot and to rust. You have to replace them. It’s very hard to replace them.

Wind needs massive subsidy, and you are paying in Scotland and in UK massive subsidies to have these ugly monsters all over the place.

So I restricted windmills in the United States. They also kill all your birds …

So it’s a very expensive energy. It’s a very ugly energy, and we won’t allow it in the United States.

Most or all of these claims are bogus. Here is a fact check on Trump’s wind turbine claims by Helena Horton.

Here is another by AP, a news agency. And here is one by DW, a German broadcaster.

And this is what Keir Starmer said immediately after Trump had finished his anti-turbine diatribe.

We believe in a mix, and obviously oil and gas is going to be with us for a very long time, and that will be part of the mix.

But also wind, solar, increasingly nuclear, which is what we’ve been discussing this morning.

The most important thing for the United Kingdom is that we have control of our energy, and we have energy independence and security.

The Trump/Starmer Q&A lasted for about 70 minutes. It was 95% Donald Trump. Keir Starmer was mostly there as a stage prop, although he did manage to intervene just enough to salvage his dignity and to show that he is willing to disagee with Trump on some points.

In his opening remarks Trump said the US would be be setting up food centres in Gaza. He said:

We’re going to set up food centres, and we’re going to do it in conjunction with some very good people, and we’re going to supply funds …

Other nations are joining us. [To Starmer] I know your nation’s joining us, and we have all of the European nations joining us, and others also called, and they want to be helpful.

So we’re going to set up food centres where people can walk in and no boundaries. We’re not going to have fences.

And they see the food from 30 yards away. They see the food, it’s all there, but nobody is there because there are fences set up.

Asked later for how this would work, Trump did not give any further details.

Asked about reports about his name being in the Epstein files, Trump claims that has not been that interested in this story. He says:

I haven’t been overly interested.

You know, it’s a hoax that’s been built up way beyond proportion. I can say this. Those files were run by the worst scum on earth … The whole thing is a hoax. They ran the files.

He says his enemies could have put material in the files that was fake.

And if the Democrats had had material to use against him that was damaging, they would have used it before the presidential election, he says.

Referring to the Wall Street Journal report saying he drew a picture of a nude woman as part of a suggestive birthday day message for Jeffrey Epstein when the two men were great friends, he says:

I don’t do drawings. I’m not a drawing person. I don’t do drawings. Sometimes you would say, would you draw a building? And I’ll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for a charity stuff. But I’m not a drawing person. I don’t do drawings of women that I can tell you.

He also claims his poll ratings have increased by 4.5 points since this “ridiculous Epstein stuff” has been in the news.

The claim that Trump has not been interested in the Epstein story is preposterous, as David Smith explained in this Guardian article last week.

And last week Politico ran a report saying the White House was “paralysed” by indecision over how to respond to the story.

Q: Would you consider giving Ghislaine Maxwell a pardon?

Trump says:

Nobody’s approached me with it. Nobody’s asked me about it. It’s in the news about that, that aspect of it, but right now, it would be inappropriate to talk about it.

Trump offers to deliver a speech in parliament.

His state visit has been timed to take place in September while parliament is in recess, which is widely seen as a convenient way of avoiding the dilemma over whether or not to invite him to address MPs and peers. Not inviting him would look like a snub, but inviting him would be opposed by some parliamentarians.

Trump suggests he can come and address parliament on another visit.

As far as parliament, if [Starmer] wants me to speak in parliament, I’ll do it, OK.

But it doesn’t have to be [during the state visit]. It could be some other time. Maybe we should save it for another time. Well, we’ll let the one visit speak for itself, but anytime, if I could be helpful, I would certainly do it.

Trump says he will be coming to London during the state visit. But he goes on to attack Sadiq Khan. He says:

I’m not a fan of your mayor. I think he’s done a terrible job.

Trump also describes him as a “nasty person”.

To his credit, Starmer intervenes to say that Khan is “a friend of mine”.

Asked about the prospects of the Open being held again at Turnberry (which is said to be one of Trump’s big demands from the UK at the moment), Starmer says this is the first time he has visited and that it is “absolutely magnificent”. But he says that is a decision for the golfing authorties, not for him.

Q: Are you worried the Online Safety Act is going to censore Truth Social, your social media site?

Trump jokes that he does not think that is likely.

Starmer says the act is not about censoring sites. He says the UK is committed to free speech. But children should be protected from things like suicide sites.

Trump says Congress passed similar legislation, supported by his wife. He goes on:

I cannot imainge him censoring Truth Social … I only say good things about him and his country.

Q: You say you love Scotland. Will you exempt Scotch whisky from tariffs?

Trump replies:

I have great love for Scotland. You know, my mother loved Scotland, and she loved the Queen … Whenever the Queen was on television, she wanted to watch.

But, asked again if this would mean a special deal for Scotch whisky, Trump declines to make that offer. He says he thinks Scotland will benefit generally from the UK deal.

Q: What is your deadline for President Putin to agree a ceasefire in Ukraine? You originally said 50 days.

Trump says it will be about 10 or 12 days from today. There is no point waiting.

UPDATE: Trump said:

I’m going to make a new deadline, of about 10, 10 or 12 days from day. There’s no reason for waiting. It was 50 days, I wanted to be generous, but we just don’t see any progress being made.

An earlier version of this post said that Trump was giving Putin 15 days to agree a ceasefire. That was a mistake, based on 50 sounding like 15. I’m sorry for that.

Donald Trump and Keir Starmer are now holding another press event.

Trump starts by talking about Gaza, repeating a point he made earlier. He says that he always thought, once the number of hostages left got down to around 10 or 20, it would be hard to get Hamas to give them up.

He says he is speaking to Benjamin (he calls him Bibi) Netanyahu about this, and he says they are talking about “various plans”.

Earlier, when he was saying much the same on the doorstep with Starmer, he said:

I told Bibi that you’re going to have to now maybe do it a different way.

Trump repeats his claim about stopping six wars. That averages at one per month, he claims.

Christopher Hope, political editor of GB News, asked earlier if Donald Trump had any advice for the UK on the small boats crisis. (See 12.49pm.)

Trump did not seem to recognise the term, and Keir Starmer said this was a reference to boats coming across the channel. He said the UK government was taking “a lot of action” to stop people coming in the first place.

Then Trump added:

Immigration is a big factor.

And I think, frankly, if they’re coming from other countries and you don’t know who they are – are they coming from prisons? We have them where they came in from prisons. We’re moving them all out.

Last month we had zero people come into the country, zero, other than coming through legal means.

If you’re stopping immigration and stopping the wrong people, my hats are off to you. You’re doing, not a good thing, you’re doing a fantastic thing.

So I know nothing about the boats.

But if the boats are loaded up with bad people - and they usually are, because other countries don’t send their best, they send people that they don’t want, they’re not stupid people, they send the people that they don’t want.

And I’ve heard that you’ve taken a much stronger stance on this.

Starmer agreed with this, saying the government had done “a lot of work” to stop people coming. He said 35,000 people have been returned over the past year.

Here are the US government figures for illegal crossings into the country in June. They are not zero, but they are at a record low.

Trump also does not seem to understand why people end up trying to enter the UK illegally to seek asylum. It is not because they are “bad people” sent by countries trying to get rid of them; it is generally the opposite – ordinary people trying to get away from terrible regimes.

Here is the full reply from Donald Trump when he was asked if he agreed with Benjamin Netanyahu’s assessment that there is no starvation in Gaza. (See 12.52pm.) Trump replied:

I don’t know. Based on television, I would say not particularly, because those children look very hungry.

But we’re giving a lot of money and a lot of food, and other nations are now stepping up.

I know that this nation is.

At that point Keir Starmer intervened, saying:

It’s a humanitarian crisis. It’s an absolute catastrophe. Nobody wants to see that. I think people have revolted at what they’re seeing on their screen. So we’ve got to get to that ceasefire. And, thank you, Mr President, for leading on that.

And also to just get more and more aid in. And again, America has done a lot of this … We’re now working with Jordan on getting direct aid drops in. This is a desperate situation.

Trump claims that, if he were not in office, there would be six wars taking place.

If I weren’t around, you’d have, right now, six major wars going on. India would be fighting with Pakistan.

He refers to the dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, claiming that his intervention – and his threat to cease trade talks – led to a ceasefire. Serbia and Kosovo is another areas where he has made a difference, he says. And he cites the peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

It is not clear what the other two are.

(But he does sound as if he is serious about that Nobel peace prize nomination.)

Q: Benjamin Netanyahu says there is no starvation in Gaza. Do you agree?

Trump says “not particularly”, because he says the TV footage suggests children in Gaza are “very hungry’.

But he says the US is giving a lot of money in aid.

Q: What is advice on dealing with small boats?

Starmer explains to Trump what this refers to.

Trump says immigration is a big factor. Are the people coming from prisons, he asks. He claims he has stopped illegal immigration into the UK.

He says he does not know about this situation. But he assumes that countries are not sending their best people.

He says he has heard Starmer is taking a “very strong” stance on immigration.

Starmer backs that.

UPDATE: See 1.11pm and 1.48pm for fuller quotes.

Keir Starmer has arrived at Turnberry.

Sky News is showing footage of President Trump speaking to the PM. But there is a bagpipe playing loudly in the background, and so we can’t hear what is being said.

The Reform UK press conference is over. Apart from the revelation about Colin Sutton joining the party as a crime adviser, the main announcement was that Reform UK says it will repeal the Online Safety Act if it wins power.

Nigel Farage, the party leader, said that Reform was in favour of protecting children from dangerous content online (which is one of the main aims of the act). But he said that it was technically flawed, and that it imposed too many restrictions on freedom of speech.

However, Farage left it to Zia Yusuf, the former party chair who now runs Reform’s local government Doge operation, to explain in detail what the problems were. Yusuf said:

Britain is descending rapidly into some kind of dystopia.

This Online Safety Act, Orwellianly named, what it does, it does absolutely nothing to protect children. What it does do is suppress freedom of speech in this country and really force social media companies to censor anti-government speech ….

I use the word dystopia advisedly. Inevitably, if you look through history, any student of history will know that the way countries slip into this sort of authoritarian regime is through legislation that cloaks tyranny inside the warm fuzz of safety and security, and [they] hope nobody reads the small print.

Well, we have read the small print. We at Reform think this is the greatest assault on freedom of speech in our lifetimes, and I can announce today that as prime minister Nigel Farage and a Reform government will repeal the Online Safety Act.

Yusuf cited three aspects of the legislation in particular that he claimed were unacceptable.

First, he said the legislation gives the secretary of state the power to tell Ofcom to “rewrite the rules about what speech social media platforms must censor”. He said:

That is a pretty terrifying thing for a single individual to have. In fact, it’s the sort of thing that I think Xi Jinping [the Chinese president] himself would blush at the concept of.

Second, he said the act says it is illegal to something you know to be false which causes “non-trivial psychological harm”. Yusuf said this would force social media companies to “ proactively censor” that sort of speech.

Third, Yusuf said the penalties were excessive. Social media companies can be fined up to 10% of global revenues under the act. And executives can be jailed if they break the law. Yusuf said this would create a “perverse set of incentives”, and that it would lead to social media companies being “over-zealous on their censorship”.

As an example, he claimed that X had suppressed social media posts about a protest about an immigration hotel in Leeds. There was many other examples, he claimed.

(Supporters of the bill would argue that getting social media companies to be “zealous” about suppressing harmful content is exactly what the act is meant to be doing.)

But Yusuf also argued that the bill was flawed, because a surge in sign-ups for VPN providers suggests people are finding ways of getting round the restrictions requiring age verification for some types of content, including porn. He claimed this showed that “13, 14, 15-year-olds know far more about how the internet works than the dinosaurs that crafted this legislation and voted it through”.

Yusuf also said that “sending all of these kids onto VPNs is a far worse situation, and sends them much closer to the dark web where real dangers lie”. So it “actually makes children less safe on the internet”, he claimed.

A reader asks:

Is there any indication of the costs associated with policing an American private individual holidaying on his own property in Scotland?

I have not seen any figures. But this is what John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, said when he was asked how much the policing operation cost on BBC Breakfast this morning.

All of that will be worked out and we’ll address that with Police Scotland and the Scottish Police Authority, and we’re talking to the United Kingdom government about these questions, but it’s important that we have a secure policing operation.

It’s also important that members of the public who wish to express their point of view, who want to protest about the visit or about other issues, are able to go about their exercise of their democratic right to protest. That’s exactly what they’ve been able to do since Friday, and that’s the way it should be.

Swinney also said the government should be paying to protect Trump.

The security arrangements have gone well since President Trump arrived on Friday, and that’s as it should be, because we’ve got an obligation to make sure that when we have major international visitors, when they come to Scotland, that they are protected and able to go about their activities.

In a column for the Daily Record, John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, has said that, if the SNP get a majority in next year’s Holyrood elections, that will be a mandate for a second independence referendum. He said:

Over the next few months, the SNP will set out some radical policies that we know will transform Scotland – ambitious ideas that can be realised with the powers of independence.

For us to achieve that independence, the first step is to secure a legal referendum recognised by all. In 2011 we secured that reliable and dependable route when the SNP achieved a majority of seats at Holyrood.

That is the only mechanism that has been proven to deliver such a vote - so that is what we need to deliver again.

That is why I have submitted a motion to the SNP conference proposing that we work to deliver a majority of SNP MSPs in the Scottish parliament to secure that referendum on independence.

Even if the SNP does win a majority next year, the Scottish government would need the consent of Westminster to hold legally-binding independence referendum. But after the SNP victory in 2011, the then PM, David Cameron, decided it was not feasible for the UK government to block a referendum requested by the majority of MSPs.

In response, the anti-independence Scotland in Union campaign said this intervention showed “precisely why we need to get rid of the SNP at the next election”.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, will reportedly be joining Donald Trump for dinner in Aberdeen this evening, ahead of a bilateral meeting they have having tomorrow.

In interviews this morning ahead of the meetings, Swinney said that he would ask the president to exempt Scotch whisky from US trade tariffs. He told BBC Breakfast:

Tariffs are very important for the Scottish economy and obviously scotch whisky is a unique product.

It can only be produced in Scotland. It’s not a product that can be produced in any other part of the world. So there’s a uniqueness about that, which I think means there is a case for it to be taken out of the tariffs arrangement that is now in place.

Obviously the trade deal with the United States provides a degree of stability for economic connections with the United States, but the application of tariffs is increasing the costs for the Scotch whisky industry. So one of my objectives will be to make the case to President Trump that Scotch whiskey should be exempted from those tariffs …

The tariffs just now are costing the industry about £4m each week, so it’s a very significant burden on the industry.

Asked if his previous claim that Trump’s call for the displacement of the Gazan people out of the region amounted to “ethnic cleansing” would cause problems when the two men met face to face, Swinney replied:

I think what’s important is that we focus on the solutions that are required now, and the absolutely immediate situation is a necessity for a ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to need to flow into Gaza so that the people of Gaza can be saved from the starvation that they face.

And I think President Trump is ideally positioned. In fact, he’s perhaps uniquely positioned to apply that pressure to Israel to ensure that there is safe passage for humanitarian aid to support the people of Gaza, who face an absolutely unbearable set of circumstances as a consequence of the conflict.

And a key part of that must be the application of a durable ceasefire, the flow of humanitarian aid and the progress towards a two state solution in the Middle East.

Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, is holding a press conference now. There is a live feed here.

I will post the main points after Farage has finished.

This is what PA Media have filed about the Colin Sutton appointment.

A top ex-detective who spearheaded a series of high profile murder investigations will join Reform UK as its adviser on police and crime.

Colin Sutton, who led the investigation into serial killer Levi Bellfield, is to help Nigel Farage’s party develop its pledge to halve crime in five years.

Farage has said he will spend £7bn on policies towards this goal, including by recruiting 30,000 extra police officers.

The Reform leader told the Mail on Sunday newspaper that ex-police officer Mr Sutton would be a “huge asset” to his party.

Sutton told the paper he would give all frontline officers tasers, reopen 300 closed police stations, and stop investigations into online arguments as part of Reform’s policing offer.

The two men will appear together at a press conference on Monday morning.

When President Macron announced last week that France will officially recognise the state of Palestine in September, the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu strongly condemned the decision. In a post on social media, he said:

Such a move rewards terror and risks creating another Iranian proxy, just as Gaza became.

A Palestinian state in these conditions would be a launch pad to annihilate Israel — not to live in peace beside it. Let’s be clear: the Palestinians do not seek a state alongside Israel; they seek a state instead of Israel.

And, in an article for the Telegraph at the weekend, Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, reiterated the same argument. She said:

Palestinian recognition would be a reward for hostage-taking, for rape, for murder, for burning innocent people alive.

This morning, asked if he agreed with Netanyahu that recognising the state of Palestine would amount to rewarding Hamas for the 7 October attack, Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, replied”

No, I think that is not the right way to characterise it.

We all recognise that both Israelis and Palestinians need a two-state solution, no matter how difficult that is. That requires a state to exist on both sides.

This conflict has clearly been going for a very long period of time. But the scale of the horrific things that we are seeing – we’ve surely got to use this as a moment to really move forward on a two-state solution. And that is how we want to use recognition.

This is what Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, told BBC Breakfast this morning about how he does not expect the Trump/Starmer talks today to lead to a decision on some of the matters left unresolved in the US-UK trade deal announced earlier this year. He said:

We were very happy to announce the breakthrough that we had a few months ago in relation to sectors like automotive, aerospace, which are really important to the UK economy.

But we always said it was job saved, but it wasn’t job done. There’s more to do.

The negotiations have been going on on a daily basis since then. There’s a few issues to push a little bit further today.

We won’t perhaps have anything to announce a resolution of those talks, but there’s some sectors that we still need to resolve, particularly around steel and aluminium, and there’s the wider conversation about what the US calls its reciprocal tariffs.

Reynolds delivered a similar message on the Today programme. (See 9.30am.)

One of the world’s most prominent hedge fund investors, Ray Dalio, has warned that the UK is stuck in a “doom loop” as it faces a worrying mix of higher taxes, rising debts and slower growth. Kalyeena Makortoff has the story.

Good morning. Keir Starmer has a lead role in the Trump show today. He is flying to Scotland for a meeting with the US president, who is combining a golfing holiday with meetings with leaders like Starmer, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, and John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister.

The von der Leyen talks culminated in the announcement of what Trump described as a “powerful” trade deal (albeit one that only means the Trump tariffs won’t damage US-EU trade as much as they otherwise might have done; it is not an improvement on the status quo ante.)

Starmer is set to spend a lot of time with Trump today. He is arriving before lunch, and he is not flying back to London until this evening, after what No 10 describes as a “private engagement” (dinner?) at Trump’s golf course in Aberdeenshire. There is a bilateral scheduled, but Trump does not like long meetings and Downing Street has not said much about what else the two men will be doing. Starmer has reportedly been working out how to respond if Trump invites him to play a round of golf. According to my colleague Eleni Courea, who is Scotland covering the trip, that is one humiliation that Trump won’t be inflicting on the PM, who is a good footballer but a total novice at Trump’s favourite sport. But Starmer will also be flying to Aberdeen with the president on Air Force One, we expect. In White House terms, that is a token of respect.

Normally when political leaders meet, they speak to the press afterwards, to brief on what they have agreed. Today Trump and Starmer will hold their main event with reporters before their talks and so we are not expecting them to announce anything of substance at this point. Instead, we may just end up with Trump giving us one of his stream-of-consciousness peformances. While he has been in Scotland, these have include rants about European immigration (“you got to stop this horrible invasion that’s happening to Europe – immigration is killing Europe”) and wind turbines (“when they start to rust and rot in eight years you can’t really turn them off, you can’t burn them – the whole thing is a con job”).

At one point it was expected that Trump and Starmer would use the meeting today to tie up loose ends in the US-UK trade deal, particularly relating to steel tariffs. But Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and he told the Today programme he “wouldn’t expect announcements from this visit” on trade.

Instead, the situation in Gaza may be the focus of the Trump/Starmer talks and, as Pippa Crerar reports, Starmer will urge Trump to use his influence with Israel to get Benjamin Netanyahu to resume peace talks with Hamas.

This is a difficult subject for Starmer because the PM is coming under increasing pressure from members of his own cabinet to recognise the state of Palestine. Doing this would anger Trump, who takes the Israeli view that this would amount to rewarding Hamas for the 7 October attack. And it would not have any immediate practical impact on the situation in Gaza. But Labour MPs are increasingly coming round to the view that, as Wes Streeting, the health secretary put it, it is best to recognise the state of Palestine “while there is a state of Palestine left to recognise”. As Mark Malloch Brown, a former UN deputy secretary-general and a minister in Gordon Brown’s government, told the Observer yesterday, recognition would also send a message to Israel that “you can’t bomb your way out of the reality that you’re going to have to negotiate with the Palestinians.”

In interviews this morning Reynolds said that the UK was committed to recognising the state of Palestine; it was just a matter of timing, he said.

He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:

It is a case of when, not if.

It’s about how we use this moment, because you can only do it once to have a meaningful breakthrough.

And on Sky News he went further, implying he expects recognition to happen during this parliament.

In this parliament, yes. I mean, if it delivers the breakthrough that we need.

But don’t forget, we can only do this once. If we do it in a way which is tokenistic, doesn’t produce the end to this conflict, where do we go to next?

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rachel Reeves, chancellor, is on a visit in Bournemouth.

11am: Nigel Farage, Reform UK leader, holds a press conference with “a special guest”. According to the Daily Mail, he is Colin Sutton, a former detective chief inspector, who is joining the party as a crime adviser.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Around noon: Keir Starmer is due to arrive at President Trump’s Turnberry golf course in South Ayrshire, Scotland, where the two leaders are due to speak to the media at around 12.30pm. They will hold a formal meeting in the afternoon before flying to Aberdeen, where Trump owns another golf course and where they are expected to have a private dinner.

Around lunchtime: Kemi Badenoch is expected to record a media clip.

Afternoon: The Stop Trump Coalition holds a protest outside Trump’s Aberdeenshire golf course.

Late afternoon: Angela Rayner, deputy PM, hosts a reception for the Lionesses following victory in the Women’s Euro 2025.

Also, David Lammy, foreign secretary, is in New York for a meeting on a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

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