US president heads to Chequers as former Meta executive Nick Clegg says UK must learn to be less reliant on US technology
Good morning. It’s day two of the state visit and, after the pomp, today’s we’re on to the policy. Donald Trump is leaving Windsor Castle and heading for Chequers where he will have private talks with Keir Starmer before the two leaders hold a press conference.
In his speech at the state banquet last night, Trump delivered used some uncharacteristically sophisticated and lovely metaphors to describe the US/UK relationship. He said:
We’re joined by history and faith, by love and language and by transcendent ties of culture, tradition, ancestry and destiny.
We’re like two notes in one chord or two verses of the same poem, each beautiful on its own, but really meant to be played together.
Because of the very close partnership we’ve had with the United States, understandably so in the cold war period, I think we’ve been quite relaxed about this very heavy dependency … both in the public and the private sector, on American technology.
I just so happen to believe that is now changing because the rupture – notwithstanding the pomp and ceremony of the state visit by Donald Trump this week – the transatlantic rupture, in my view, is real.
We’ve got to learn, technologically, as much as in so many other walks of life, to stand more on own two feet, rather than just cling on to Uncle Sam’s coattails.
While that served us well for a while, I think that’s no longer going to be the paradigm that works for us going forward.
