with Alastair Lockhart and John Power |
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Good morning. Xi Jinping’s state visit to the US starts today; Donald Trump will greet him on the tarmac, a gesture Xi did not extend when Trump visited China in May.
The US President met Andy Burnham face-to-face yesterday at the UN. While praising him, he also criticised the handover of the Chagos Islands. US officials held talks with Iran on the sidelines. Piers Morgan is calling for Earl Spencer’s book to be pulped, the EU has relaxed sanctions on two Russian oligarchs, and it’s the first day of autumn. Welcome to Spectator Daily: here’s everything you need to know today. MR XI GOES TO WASHINGTON All the front pages focus on Andy Burnham’s meeting with Donald Trump, but a more consequential rendezvous kicks off today when Xi Jinping touches down in Washington for the first time in 11 years. Team Trump are fulfilling the promise they made during the President’s trip to China in May, and Xi is getting the full state visit. Melania Trump has been posting the decorations on social media, and everyone is being generally well behaved. |
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 | Getty | ‘Donald, has Melania ever considered using Cath Kidston?’ |
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Trump will meet Xi and his wife Peng Liyuan straight off the plane at Andrews Air Force Base – usually, the president waits at the White House. It’s an interesting act of respect/submission from Trump, especially since Xi did not come to the tarmac when Air Force One landed in Beijing in May.
A welcome ceremony will then be held, before a guard of honour in the Rose Garden, a summit meeting and a state dinner. As ever, the simmering trade war will be at the top of the list, which is in something of an awkward truce. He Lifeng, China’s top trade representative, met US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent for talks on Saturday. The extraordinary escalations of spring 2025 have been reversed, but tariffs and export controls remain substantial. The two governments are discussing reducing tariffs on about $30 billion worth of goods.
But the more substantial discussions will be on AI. As this Axios article explains, there is increasing demand for an AI hotline – an emergency ‘red phone’ so the two countries can alert one another if something goes seriously wrong. Bessent pitched a ‘notification mechanism’ at the weekend, similar to the hotline that was established between the US and the Soviet Union after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
It might be a good idea, but it seems unlikely the two governments will back more regulation. Trump doesn’t want China to overtake the US, and has called fears of a catastrophe a ‘HOAX’. China’s AI culture, meanwhile, doesn’t have profound fears about existential risk. Instead, China is more concerned about a model being more powerful than the CCP, or cyberattacks.
On wider safety issues, Xi also won’t want a regime that freezes model development as it is now, with the US marginally in front. China wants to keep expanding its supply of cheap open-source models, betting more on use than capabilities. Given all of that – two sides that want to keep the AI race hurtling forward, and two sides that don’t believe the scare stories – don’t bet on much progress.
Many will probably spend today jostling for a last-minute invite to the state dinner. The New York Post says it’s become the hottest ticket in town, especially since the room can only host 150 people (Trump laments that his ballroom isn’t ready yet). So many apparently lobbied Trump personally to attend the state dinner with the King there earlier this year that administration officials were put in another room. |
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| Coming up today |  | Harvey Weinstein will be sentenced today for sexually assaulting a production assistant. | | There’s a court hearing on CNN, MS Now and Politico’s White House access (recently banned) at 8.30 p.m. | | And good news for leaf lovers: it’s officially the first day of autumn. |
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BURNHAM DOWN THE HOUSE
A first face-to-face meeting with Donald Trump went about as well as Andy Burnham could have expected. On the sidelines of the UN general assembly yesterday, Trump said Burnham was a man he could do business with, and that relationships with Britain were ‘more up now’.
The rub is that he expressed an assertive opposition to the ‘terrible’ Chagos Islands deal, claiming that US planes had been forced to fly from the US to bomb Iran… ‘we had to send the B-2 bombers back home to Missouri’. Burnham said his government would ‘work hard’ to find a resolution. The Telegraph reported that Nigel Farage has been lobbying the US government about the deal over the past week. |
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 | Getty | How many more British PMs can Trump squeeze in before he leaves office? |
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Trump said: ‘I don’t support it. I think it’s terrible. It was a terrible deal. They [Mauritius] all of a sudden say they have ownership. Somebody has ownership that never showed up before after decades and centuries. I think it’s ridiculous.’
He also said (thankfully!) that Britain should ‘be okay’when asked about whether a conflict between the UK and Russia was likely. He added that ‘the rhetoric from your last prime minister was too tough. I’ve seen that dialogue and it’s too nasty.’
Burnham added that his discussions with Trump involved considerations about the Falkland Islands. Javier Milei has recently asserted Argentina’s claim to the islands, with Trump hinting that he would not come to Britain’s aid. Such scruples, however, were dealt with, and off Burnham went to meet Ursula von der Leyen (albeit ten minutes late – von der Leyen said ‘these things are understandable’). Burnham’s easiest engagement of the day was probably a morning walk around Central Park with Pedro Sanchéz; some Morning Press readers may hope he didn’t pick up too many ideas off the Spaniard.
In his speech to the UN general assembly, the PM declared ‘Britain is back’. He announced the creation of a new centre to tackle disinformation, singling out Russia, and said the UK would be an ‘honest broker’ on AI. He also unveiled an AI defence partnership with the US and touched on Ukraine and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, American officials held talks with Iranian counterparts at the sidelines. Trump’s talks team Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner said they had a ‘very good meeting’, as they celebrated the first direct talks since late June. In his general assembly speech yesterday, Trump said he could ‘annihilate the Islamic republic and do it quickly’ if they didn’t agree to a deal. |
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| Watch and listen | | Piers Morgan hosted Norman Finkelstein and Hen Mazzig, an Israeli activist, on the latest episode of his Uncensored show. | | Blake Scholl, an interesting guy pursuing supersonic commercial flight, joined the latest episode of the All-In podcast. | | Stuart Broad and Steven Finn agonise over ranking the world’s top ten cricketers on their For the Love of Cricket podcast. |
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Ineos, one of the largest chemical companies in the world, has decided to pause production in three plants in Hull. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the conglomerate’s outspoken billionaire owner, said the plants were no longer competitive because gas prices are now ‘12 times the level in the US’. A thousand jobs are at risk from the decision, but they will be kept on while Ineos attempts to negotiate the direct importation of LNG from the United States. The cost of gas has risen dramatically since closures of the Strait of Hormuz began in March and Ineos has also been facing pressure from cheap imports from China (Ineos was calling for tariffs on Chinese imports last year).
Ratcliffe, who also owns a large stake in Manchester United, made headlines recently when he said Britain was ‘on the slide’, calling the decision not to invest in North Sea oil and gas ‘insanity’.
Piers Morgan is calling for copies of Swan Song by Earl Spencer to be pulled from the shelves, an exhortation that makes the front page of today’s Sun. Spencer made a factual error when he stated that Morgan had been editor of the Mirror when ‘intrusive photographs’ of Diana at the gym were published. Spencer has apologised to Morgan, and while Morgan has accepted his apology he still wants the offending pages to be removed from the book and has not dropped his legal challenge. It means he will remain near to the centre of this royal drama as the story continues to unfold over the coming weeks. |
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 | Getty | Never bet against Morgan |
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Ed Davey delivered his closing speech at the Liberal Democrat Party Conference yesterday. His promise is to deliver large tax cuts funded by a boost in economic growth from rejoining the European Union. The scale of ambition is impressive; Davey wants to raise the 40p threshold to £56,000 with an increase in the personal allowance to £15,000. Have a full read of the press release here. It’s a policy pledge designed to be catnip to the sort of instinctive Conservative who was unhappy over Brexit and remains unconvinced by Kemi Badenoch. Take a shot every time you read the phrase ‘Orange Book’ in lobby writeups this week.
There will be a full inquest into the death of the ‘Putney Pusher’ suspect. Nicholas Brandram was 44 when he was found dead by his brother-in-law in his home after missing a family meal. Brandram had been arrested months earlier in relation to an incident in 2017 when a jogging man was caught on camera pushing a woman into the path of a bus on Putney Bridge, which swerved in time to avoid injuring her. Brandram’s family deny he was involved in the incident and have blamed the Metropolitan Police’s handling of the case, saying that there was no forensic evidence connecting him to it and that he had been subject to ‘immense pressure’. |
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RISKY BUSINESS
A fairly important economic release is coming at 9a.m.: the OECD will release its ‘interim economic outlook report’. This sits between its twice-yearly assessments of the world’s major economies, but it’ll be worth looking at what they have to say before the Budget. New growth and inflation forecasts will be published for all the G20 economies: Britain’s should be notably interesting, given yesterday’s news that borrowing this summer was much higher than analysts expected.
Some better economic news is that Saudi Arabia signalled yesterday it will be restarting its east-west oil pipeline and crude exports from its Red Sea coast. The kingdom had closed the pipeline almost two weeks ago after drone strikes from the Houthis, but there’s optimism about diplomatic talks this week. Oil dropped to as low as $97.43 a barrel after the reports, though it later rose to $99.64.
Meanwhile, the EU has lifted sanctions on two Russian oligarchs, as it signed off on an extension of the rest of the individual sanctions for a further three years. France had demanded the delisting of Alisher Usmanov (formerly an Arsenal shareholder) over a secret prisoner exchange with Azerbaijan involving a French national. Latvia objected, and France has promised them protection under France’s nuclear umbrella. Sanctions against Mikhail Fridman have also been dropped; he was seeking $16 billion in damages against Luxembourg in an arbitration claim.
And Paramount finally settled its lawsuit with a dozen US states yesterday, meaning its £83 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery will almost definitely go ahead. Paramount has to make sure a certain percentage of its films are made in the US and create an editorial independence board to oversee CBS News and CNN. If you’re stateside next Tuesday, one of CNN’s most famous faces, Clarissa Ward, will be speaking to Freddie Sayers about the merger, among other things. It’s at our friends down the road UnHerd’s new club in Manhattan: there are a few tickets left here.
And why not read this excellent New York Times profile of David Ellison, who’s fronted the whole thing: the piece says that ‘adding Warner Bros. Discovery will expand his power to a scale without precedent, spanning a wider range of media than the empires of classic moguls like Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer’. He is compared by three of the sources to Michael Corleone in The Godfather. Good sign. |
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 | ‘Oh no! Don’t axe my triple lock pension.’ |
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We’re into the strongest ‘El Niño’ on record, and we got our first indicator yesterday of its magnitude. Daily sea surface temperatures in a region of the Pacific were 3.05C above average on 19 September, the strongest on record, weeks before its expected peak. El Niño, I have tried to understand, is when winds reverse direction, thus releasing more heat from the water. This doesn’t always mean that it heats up, though, but it could. Usually, it causes below-average monsoon rainfall in India: another indicator that seems to be coming true.
In football, Mikel Arteta signed a new contract as Arsenal manager, reportedly taking him to 2029 and what would then be a decade in charge. He’ll have to stay at the Emirates until 2046 to overtake Sir Alex Ferguson’s record at United, however.
Good news! Why, it’s ‘Fat Bear Week’. Voting is now open for you to pick your favourite of Alaska’s heavy brown bears. The annual competition pits the 2,200 residents of Katmai National Park against each other. Last year, the winner was ‘Chuck’, who clocked in at 1,200 lbs. It’s good for them to be fat, don’t worry: it’s what they need to survive the winter, after a luxurious summer gorging on salmon. |
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 | iStock | If I were the fish I simply wouldn’t have jumped there |
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