Here are some pictures from the carriage procession.

Liz Kendall, the science secretary, was on the Today programme this morning talking about the “tech prosperity deal” agreed with the US. (See 9.43am.)

American tech companies were reportedly pushing for exemptions from the digital services tax (DST) as part of a deal. But asked if that would happen, Kendall said that was not part of the deal.

Asked if the DST would stay, she said:

Rachel Reeves [the chancellor] has been very strong about saying people need to pay their fair share of taxes. It wasn’t included in this partnership at all.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, has criticised Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party leader, for refusing in an LBC interview to criticise Elon Musk’s “fight back or die” speech to the rally organised by Tommy Robinson in London on Saturday, and for refusing to describe Robinson (an extremist with multiple convictions, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) as far-right. He posted this on social media.

I’m old enough to remember when Conservative party leaders believed in law and order.

And Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader, said in a statement:

By pandering to extremists instead of standing up to them, she is alienating moderate Conservatives and proving the Tories are no longer the party of law and order.

British police were injured at last week’s far right rally while Elon Musk stood over and encouraged violence on our streets. It is sickening and it must be called out by every party leader.

Davey and Badenoch have both been invited to the state banquet for Trump tonight, but the Conservative leader won’t get a chance to explain herself to her rival – because Davey is boycotting the event.

The Stop Trump Coalition, which is organising national protests against the president today, says it is “naive” to think that Trump will help the UK as a result of today’s visit. A spokesperson for the coalition issued this statement this morning:

We have heard from people across the political spectrum who will be joining in the protest today, because the majority agree that we should not be rolling out the red carpet for Donald Trump. The large numbers of people marching today are telling Starmer and his government that they must stand up to Trump.

There is a clear difference between having diplomatic relationships and hosting an authoritarian leader for the pageantry of a state visit. Trump is clearly in Putin’s pocket — and we would not allow Putin in the UK, let alone invite him for a state visit.

It is naive to think that because the UK wines and dines him that Donald Trump will have any interest in supporting the UK in the future. Starmer is selling out the UK for a tech deal that opens our country up to an invasion by big tech, without doing anything for the issues that matter to regular people. The only people who win in this deal are people like Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg.

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 Britain

The 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.

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.

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.

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