Afternoon Briefing Thursday 18th September

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. This is your Times afternoon briefing for Thursday the 18th of September. The US president has shaken hands with the prime minister outside his country residence Chequers before talks on Ukraine, the Middle East and trade.

0:46The two leaders have expressed differences on the extent of their support for Ukraine. Times Radio's political editor Anna Mikhailova says the king has already sought to use his influence in his dinner speech last night. The king's comments at the banquet last night were very interesting in being quite rarely political by specifically talking about the need to support Ukraine and calling out tyranny in Europe, which is obviously a reference to Russia. And I wonder if it would be interesting to hear whether Trump, he nodded when the king said that, and it would be interesting to see if the king's soft power has had any effect there.

1:23Both Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump will speak at a business event and take a press conference this afternoon. The Prime Minister is going to wait until after the president has gone home to recognise Palestine as a state. The US opposes doing so, but Britain, France, Canada and Australia are all expected to support Palestinian statehood at the UN Assembly next week. Former IDF spokesperson Jonathan Conrickus said this decision was a sign of support for Hamas, whether or not the UK government sees it that way. What the UK government says is nice, but what matters is really how this will be perceived by Arabs and people in the Middle East.

1:59And how it will be perceived is a tremendous, gigantic victory for Hamas, given tailwind and support by the West. The government told Times Radio that it's intensely frustrated that no migrants have been deported to France this week. Several were meant to be on planes, but all were met with legal challenges, causing the Home Secretary to launch an urgent review into modern slavery laws which are being used to delay removals. James Murray, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, also refused to say whether asylum seekers from France will be arriving in the UK this weekend. I'm not going to give a sort of blow-by-blow account of what might happen over the next couple of days because I think what actually your listeners and people across Britain will do is take a step back in a few years' time when we're getting towards the next general election and say, you know, what has this government done?

2:44And actually what we've done is got in place not only this process to return people to France but also all of the other actions we're taking which would mean that 35 ,000 people with no right to be here have been returned since the general election. Mr Murray also told Times Radio that the Chancellor will stick to her own fiscal rules this autumn, meaning she can't borrow to cover day-to-day spending. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury said those fiscal rules are non-negotiable because they are the basis of stability. Former Conservative Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told Times Radio that Rachel Reeves already has her hands tied because of how the markets have shifted since Liz Truss's government's mini-budget.

3:19Every Chancellor before us had this choice between tax, spend and borrow. And normally centre-left governments would do a bit more spending and a bit of borrowing and centre-right governments would do a few more tax cuts and a bit of borrowing. And the markets have now taken borrowing off the table. In a way, the markets are now determining fiscal policy and this is irrespective of which party is in power. For more stories like this, listen throughout the day to Times Radio.

3:54This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwC. AI is everywhere. In the news, in our hands, but return on investment, not so much. So how do you get beyond the hype and deliver AI that powers reinvention and growth across your business? Strong foundations unlock AI's potential. That's why PwC takes you further with tech, strengthening the data quality, processes and workflows that shape how well AI performs. PwC turns innovation into implementation so you can accelerate from experiment to scale. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Hello, I'm Monica Reinagle, host of the Nutrition Diva podcast.

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