President Donald Trump and Keir Starmer are having private bilateral talks on Thursday before a joint press conference, a conversation which Nigel Farage predicts will see the President buttonhole Starmer on the parlous state of free speech in Britain.
The Marine One helicopter conveyed President Donald Trump from Windsor Castle to Chequers, the official country residence of the British Prime Minister on Thursday morning. President Trump departed the ancient Windsor Castle where he and the First Lady Melania had passed the night as guests of the King and Queen, but not before saying his farewells to the Royals at the castle steps.
While the contents of Thursday’s bilateral talks are private, Brexit pioneer and poll-leading Reform UK Party boss Nigel Farage said overnight that his friend and ally President Trump would very likely take the opportunity to put Sir Keir on the spot about the erosion of freedom of speech under his leadership, and indeed has to if American companies can feel confident in investing in Britain in the future.
Speaking to The Sun’s Harry Cole, Farage riffed off President Trump’s well-received state banquet speech on Wednesday night that emphasised the “transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny” between the United States and United Kingdom.
AYLESBURY, ENGLAND – SEPTEMBER 18 British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Lady Victoria Starmer welcome U.S. President Donald Trump to Chequers, the country home of the British prime minister, on September 18, 2025 in Aylesbury, England. This is the final day of President Trump’s second UK state visit, with the previous one taking place in 2019 during his first presidential term. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Farage said “…we share a culture, we watch the same films, we listen to the same music, we read the same books” but observed America had preserved its rights where Britain had not. He continued: “They believe in their first amendment rights very, very strongly. They believe in free speech up to the moment where you shout fire in a theatre or genuinely incite, and I would be very surprised if these weren’t very important parts of the private discussion that take place a chequers tomorrow.”
Earlier this month veteran comedy writer Graham Linehan, an Irish citizen who now lives in the United States, was arrested by five armed police officers at Heathrow Airport as he flew into the United Kingdom over a joke he posted online. Mr Farage warned a similar fate could face American citizens under those same laws if Britain’s war on free speech wasn’t tackled.
He said: “After all, an American tech entrepreneur could now be arrested at Heathrow Airport despite not being a British citizen, for something they said when they weren’t even in this country. And if you’re seriously talking about £20-30 billion of investment into the UK by tech giants… that conversation absolutely has to happen.”
Both President Trump and Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer entered talks with their own agendas and ideas about what they wanted to get out of the other. And whether he will try or not, Starmer has been under considerable pressure from his own left-wing political faction in Britain to attempt to hector Trump on a series of pet interests. London Mayor Sadiq Khan — probably the second most conspicuous left-wing leader in the country after the Prime Minister — told Starmer in a Trump-baiting article in The Guardian that he should appeal to the President on matters of Ukraine, Israel, the “climate emergency”, and cancelling tariffs.
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