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Welcome back. This is day two of the state visit, and after the pomp, the focus now shifts to substantive matters. Trump is departing from Windsor Castle and traveling to Chequers, where he will engage in confidential discussions with the prime minister before the two leaders conduct a press conference.

In his address at the official dinner last night, Trump used some uncharacteristically elegant and poetic comparisons to depict the bilateral relationship. He said:

We are joined by the past and trust, by love and speech and by transcendent links of society, practice, lineage and fate.

We are like a pair of tones in one chord or complementary lines of the shared composition, each beautiful on its own, but genuinely designed to be heard together.

The prime minister supports his use of flattery diplomacy with Trump arguing that it delivers Britain and, with No 10 publicizing US capital injections in the UK totaling £150bn, there is evidence to indicate it’s effective.

Yet, to return to Trump’s comparison, there are others who argue that, if anyone is being “manipulated” in all of this, it’s the UK.

On the Today programme this morning, Clegg came near expressing this opinion. As a ex- Lib Dem deputy prime minister in the coalition government, and a ex- president of global affairs at Meta, he is very well placed to comment on the partnership. Clegg stated on Today that the AI investments being announced for the UK were “small portions from the Silicon Valley table”. He added he believed the UK had become over-dependent on US technology. And he elaborated:

Owing to the extremely tight cooperation we’ve had with the United States, expectedly in the post-war period, I think we have been quite relaxed about this very heavy reliance … both in the public and the business sector, on stateside technology.

I just so happen to believe that is now changing because the divide – despite the formalities of the official trip by Donald Trump this week – the bilateral break, in my estimation, is significant.

I think the Americans – and we have been on alert for this for ages – are turning their focus to the Asia-Pacific. They have much less allegiance to the transatlantic relationship.

So my perspective is, in the long run, British governments need to learn to consider different questions to how we can roll out the VIP treatment to US investment, welcome as that is. We need to ask ourselves questions about how we can nurture and scale … our own technology companies to the scale they should be.

Clegg said the UK was dealing with “a huge dilemma”.

We have got to learn, digitally, as much as in so many other sectors, to depend more on our own capabilities, rather than just cling on to the US’s coattails.

Although that worked us well for a time, I think that’s no longer going to be the paradigm that functions for us going forward.

The following outlines the agenda for the day.

• Ten in the morning: Donald Trump leaves Windsor Castle
• Before noon: Melania Trump and Queen Camilla see Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House in Windsor and Frogmore Gardens
• 10.45am: Trump is scheduled to reach at Chequers, where he will hold bilateral talks with Keir Starmer. The two statesmen are also speaking at an gathering for industry figures, and examining items from the Winston Churchill archive at the estate, the designated country residence of the PM. And there will be a aerial demonstration by the Red Devils.
• About 2.30pm: Starmer and Trump hold a media event at Chequers.