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.”