Keir Starmer is recalling his Cabinet from recess this afternoon to present a Middle East “peace plan” that puts Britain on the path to recognising Palestinian statehood. Downing Street says the prime minister showed the proposal to Donald Trump during their meeting at the US president’s Turnberry golf resort yesterday, and has discussed it with France’s Emmanuel Macron and the German chancellor Friedrich Merz. A lone gunman killed four people and critically injured a fifth in a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper yesterday evening. After shooting the victims, including a New York City police officer, 27-year-old Shane Tamura turned the gun on himself. Police say his motives aren’t yet clear. Virtual private networks have become the most downloaded apps in the UK after sites including Pornhub began requiring age verification. VPNs let users bypass the new Online Safety Act restrictions by tricking their internet browser into thinking they’re in a different country. One VPN maker has seen a 1,800% spike in downloads.

Thank goodness for Keir’s “perfect wife”

It’s rare to see a prime minister greeted as a guest in his own country, says Tom Peck in The Times. But that was the scene yesterday when Keir Starmer made his “miniature state visit” to Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf course in Scotland. As the US president waited at the top of the stone steps, like he was in “his own private Élysée Palace”, the bagpipes began playing and Sir Keir and Lady Starmer made their way up for the obligatory handshake. At their hour-long press conference later, Trump “breezily” went through everything he thought the Labour government was doing wrong: building “windmills”, hitting farmers with inheritance tax, continuing to support London mayor Sadiq Khan (“a very nasty person”). Starmer spent almost the entire thing staring into the middle distance, clenching his teeth and trying to prevent his eyes widening even further. “It was the kind of look that can get you chucked out of an Ibiza nightclub.”

The prime minister did have one ace up his sleeve, says Madeline Grant in The Spectator: his wife, Victoria. Trump “practically slobbered” over Lady Starmer, saying she was a “perfect wife” and “a respected person over all the United States”. The latter was clearly news to the notoriously publicity-shy Victoria, but perhaps it’s true. One imagines New York cab drivers affixing miniatures of Lady Starmer to their wing mirrors, and drifters in Appalachia telling tales of her beneath the stars. “On the remaining reservations of the Rosebud Sioux in South Dakota when they rise to beard the new dawn, they do so by saluting Victoria, the Lady Starmer.” For a brief moment, there was a sense that because Sir Keir had “snagged a fittie”, Donald might let him “sit on the jock table”. But then that exquisitely awkward press conference got under way, and all was forgotten. “Lady Starmer’s absence weighed heavily.”

Israeli and US intelligence agencies have concluded that Iran’s nuclear programme has been neutered for “at least a year, and probably far longer”, says David Ignatius in The Washington Post. Sources say the joint bombing campaign last month destroyed the Natanz enrichment facility, disabled the underground complex at Fordow and obliterated the uranium conversion site at Isfahan. Perhaps most crucially, Israel’s strikes in the first hours of the 12-day war killed “all of Iran’s first and second tier of physicists and other nuclear scientists, as well as most of the third tier”. The mullahs may still try to hit back, perhaps with terrorist attacks. But their ability to build a nuclear weapon has, for now, been “shattered”.

For all Rupert Murdoch’s flaws, says Jane Martinson in The Guardian, he is one of the few media barons willing to battle Donald Trump on press freedom. Whereas the likes of The Washington Post and CBS have crumpled under the US president’s intimidation, the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has held firm. Not only has the conservative paper consistently hammered Trump’s tariffs plan, calling it “the dumbest trade war in history”, it has also stood by its reporting linking him to Jeffrey Epstein despite the president launching a $10bn lawsuit. Sources close to Murdoch say that, at 94, he is unwilling to be “intimidated”.

Trump has got the better of Europe

Let’s not kid ourselves about the EU-US trade deal struck at Turnberry on Sunday, says Michael Sauga in Der Spiegel: this is “a capitulation by the Europeans”. The EU agreed to a 15% tax on almost all exports to the US, while American companies will be able to ship their products over here largely duty-free. The 50% US tariffs on steel and aluminium imports mostly remain in place. And Europe has agreed to buy $750bn worth of American energy and invest an additional $600bn into the US. Yes, the one-sided deal is better than Trump’s threatened 30% tariffs. But it’s an embarrassing reminder of just how little leverage the EU has over its transatlantic partner. We cannot afford a protracted trade war, and we cannot afford to lose America’s military support to counter an increasingly aggressive Russia. So we have to do whatever the self-proclaimed “tariff man” wants. What a humiliation.

The deal is an astonishing vindication of Trump’s “disruptive approach”, says Walter Russell Mead in The Wall Street Journal. Previous presidents have always “compartmentalised” negotiations, keeping security relations and trade talks on separate tracks. “Mr Trump thought this was stupid.” He felt the combination of America’s security guarantees and access to its enormous market was so valuable that foreign nations would pay a much higher price for it than his predecessors ever got. And he was right. The EU deal came after the US finalised a similar agreement last week with Japan, the world’s fifth largest economy, and more will presumably follow. None of this is to say Trump’s tariffs make economic sense – most economists agree that they slow growth over the long term. But he is “teaching a masterclass in the real motivations and priorities of American allies”.

To The Times:

The pursuit of the perfect mashed potato (Letters, 23-25 July) has long been a tradition in Irish culinary culture. In a practice home economics paper for the Irish Intermediate Certificate in the 1960s, a question was: “How can you avoid adding too much butter to mashed potatoes?” The accompanying advice was clear: “Beware of trick questions – it is impossible to add too much butter to mashed potatoes.”

Dr Donal Hynes
London SE1

Commentators often point out that crime in England and Wales has fallen sharply, says The Economist, from a peak of 20 million in 1995 to less than five million in 2023. But as the number of crimes fell – mostly thanks to better security in homes and cars – so too did the proportion that were solved: in 2015 around one in six recorded crimes led to a charge or a summons; by last year, it was only around one in 20. In other words, “you are much less likely to become a victim of crime, and much less likely to see justice if you do”.

It’s a K3 Scout, says Matt Oliver in The Daily Telegraph, an unmanned surface vessel designed for special forces as they adapt to a “new age of warfare”. The British-made autonomous boats are about 27ft long with a top speed of 55 knots, and can be loaded up with munitions and sent on “reconnaissance missions” hundreds of miles away. The hope is that dozens of the low-cost devices could one day create a “high-tech picket fence” around the British Isles, allowing the Navy to rapidly intercept smugglers, confront enemy ships or investigate suspicious activity without needing to dispatch crewed vessels.