Another day, another dollar - state visit sketch 2.0

From royal politesse to realpolitik today, and what a difference a day makes.

Yesterday at Windsor Castle was all about formality, hospitality and glad-handing but today, at the Prime Minister's official country residence, Chequers, the real work - that is the grubby business of, well, business - gets underway. But there are also huge geopolitical challenges to discuss, on not all of which the UK and US see eye-to-eye. The King in his banquet address subtly touched on some of these, when he spoke of tyranny once again threatening Europe (code for Vladimir Putin) and namechecked Ukraine. He also alluded to trade and the environment. Big thumbs up from Trump on the first of these (metaphorically speaking - even he wouldn't be that vulgar); on the second, hmm, a little awkward.

Interestingly, Melania, who had remained in Windsor with the Queen and Princess Catherine while the men talked turkey in Chequers, has expressed her own views on the healing power of nature, especially for children. She visited Frogmore Gardens with Kate to meet Chief Scout, Dwayne Fields, and members of the Scouts' Squirrels programme as they learned about nature to earn their Go Wild badge. We can only hope she enthuses about her outing to her husband on their way home, although I don't think we should hold our breath for the end of his "drill, baby, drill" rhetoric.

And then there's Gaza, and Starmer's caveated promise to recognise the Palestinian state at the UN next week unless Netanyahu agrees a ceasefire beforehand. The likelihood of that is vanishingly small so whether it will be Starmer's get-out-of-jail-free card with a sceptical Trump is unclear. Getting Netanyahu into jail might be more to the point but, hey, I don't write the agenda for these meetings.

After Trump landed in Marine One in the grounds of Chequers he got into his armoured car, known as 'the Beast', to drive, oo, all of 200 metres up to the house. One might have thought he would enjoy stretching his legs after all the flying but no. To make the whole thing even less environmentally friendly (sorry, Melania) his car headed a cavalcade of fourteen other black limos. What planet do these people live on? That would be the one they're destroying, obvs.

Trump was greeted at the door of the Elizabethan baronial pile by Starmer and his wife, Victoria, who is Spanish. I hope she greeted him with a warm "Buenos días, señor Presidente" in solidarity with all those Hispanic folk Trump has kicked out of the US, or detained in shackles, but I somehow doubt it and we shall never know. After a working lunch in the house and a business forum in a marquee, they were joined by Melania, who must have been choppered in from Windsor (sorry, I missed those last bits, I was losing the will to live), and all trooped out into a very windy garden to watch some parachutists descend through the clouds clutching Old Glory and a Union Jack. It seemed positively reckless to me but maybe this is what they mean by high-level diplomacy.

Then came the dreaded press conference, the moment at which all the bonhomie, so assiduously cultivated the previous day, could have evaporated spectacularly. It didn't and, let's get real, Trump and Starmer were never going to indulge in a public spat of the sort Trump subjected Volodymyr Zelensky to in the Oval Office. And at least Trump had already had his lunch, unlike the hapless President of Ukraine, summarily dismissed from the White House without so much as pretzel. That's not the way we do things.

The Great Hall of Chequers, the venue for the assembled hacks (sorry, press corps), looked suitably grand. Who knew? Certainly not we, the British people, who pay for it all but never get to see it. The walls of the lofty chamber were lined in serried rows up to the ceiling with priceless portraits and the President and PM stood in front of a vast marble fireplace bearing gilded heraldic shields - more gold envy for Trump. The q&a went quite smoothly, albeit with a lot of ducking and weaving around potential bear-traps, and in Trump's case many false claims, errors and lies according to CNN's fact check. At last it came to the final intervention, from Sky News' Beth Rigby - there's always one - who asked about what she referred to as "the elephant in the room", Lord Peter Mandelson, belatedly sacked as Ambassador to Washington by Starmer for being a self-styled 'best pal' of Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump's retort was "I didn't know him, actually", clearly a fib as he had been seen shaking his hand in the Oval Office and complimenting him on his "beautiful" accent. Okay, so he only had a year to get to know him well but you can't tell me the President of the US doesn't know everything he needs to know about a high-profile UK Ambassador. Actually, strike that, it's entirely likely Trump, never a details man, didn't know. He does now.

Having deflected the question to Starmer - "ask him, he appointed him" - that was it, all over bar the shouting. Someone lighter on his feet than Stolid Starmer might have riposted "I threw him out of my embassy for being a creep" but the moment had passed. And on that less-than collegiate note the state visit was over. Starmer was left in no doubt that his 'friend', Donald, would throw anybody under the bus and we were left wondering "is that it?", was all the hype, expense and disruption just for that? A trade deal hugely advantageous to the US but £150bn over ten years won't fill Rachel Reeves' black hole, or even that many potholes. Meanwhile, all the key geopolitical issues were skirted around. Well, really, what did we expect?

Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves did not go away entirely empty-handed - but they left us to settle the bill.

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