Lucy Fisher

That really set the sort of pretty awkward backdrop for King Charles to be addressing Congress with this historic speech.

Well, it was pretty drama-free, which is rare when it comes to foreign dignitaries flying into Washington to meet with Trump.

I think there is largely a sense that Trump respected the sort of impartiality

King Charles on the most part.

He did say that the king agreed with him that Iran shouldn't have a bomb, a nuclear bomb.

That is against the traditional royal protocol.

But in the scheme of what Trump could have said from their private conversation, it's fairly small beer.

And I think certainly from the UK perspective, there's a sense that Charles did very well in his speech to Congress, in which he went further than the usual bland fluff that we sometimes expect from our royals and landed some quite sort of political points on the importance of the special relationship between the UK and the US, on the importance of NATO.

And he landed it all with sort of real finesse and charm to avoid sort of stoking any negative reaction from Trump.

So I think he's felt to have done well in his performance.

Well, look, there's a huge economic and trade relationship.

There's a historic cultural relationship between the two nations.

And it's particularly important from the UK end because Britain's defence and security so heavily relies on US intelligence, US logistics.

And if Washington were to withdraw, it would take the UK and Europe billions of

of pounds and many years to rebuild that kind of capability.

So that is one reason that the UK is very keen to keep hugging the US close.

Thanks, Mark.

Sir Keir Starmer has had to explain to the House of Commons why he previously suggested that there was no issue with Peter Mandelson's vetting when he was appointed UK ambassador to the US.

Starmer went up before MPs and claimed that he had been deliberately and repeatedly kept in the dark by the Foreign Office over this matter.

And in response, he's been accused of scapegoating officials over this saga, and he's faced calls from the opposition for him to resign for misleading Parliament previously about the state of affairs.