US President Joe Biden has met King Charles at Windsor Castle on a flying visit to the UK.
The pair met with financiers and philanthropists to talk about climate finance – Energy Secretary Grant Shapps and Biden’s special climate envoy John Kerry were also there.
Earlier Biden met Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in Downing Street where they spoke about the US giving Ukraine cluster bombs.
Biden called the US-UK relationship “rock solid” with Sunak calling the two countries the “firmest allies”.
Biden is now headed to the Nato summit which begins tomorrow in Lithuania.
He wasn’t here for long, but he packed quite a lot in with trips to Downing Street to meet Rishi Sunak, and to Windsor Castle for climate talks with the King.
Attentions will now turn to the next two days when both Biden and Sunak touchdown in Vilnius for that summit – where no doubt the war in Ukraine will feature heavily.
Don’t forget that on Friday the US announced that it would be supplying Kyiv with cluster bombs. The UK has signed up to a treaty banning the making and storage of these munitions.
Biden arrived on Air Force One at Stansted Airport last night, before his first visit as president to Downing Street.
There he met the prime minister for talks in the Downing Street garden. On the agenda was the US decision to supply controversial cluster bombs, which are banned by more than 100 countries including the UK.
The president told Sunak “he couldn’t be meeting with a closer friend and greater ally” and “our relationship is rock solid”. While Downing Street denied a clash over their positions on cluster bombs and Ukraine joining Nato.
Biden later met the King at Windsor Castle for tea and climate talks, before setting off to Lithuania for this week’s Nato summit.
What was the mood of the meeting in Windsor between the King and President Biden?
According to the King’s spokesman: “You will have seen for yourselves the personal warmth.”
Over a 20-minute cup of tea, the King and US president were described as having “an extremely cordial and successful meeting”.
There are no details of what they talked about, beyond a “wide variety of issues of mutual interest and concern”.
But the visit will have been seen as a successful piece of symbolism for the US-UK relationship, the meeting with the King offering a carefully-choreographed display of mutual support.
It seems even the most seasoned of politicians can’t resist the lure of Windsor’s Long Walk.
I’ve just watched John Kerry – the United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate – take a stroll down the Long Walk stopping to chat to police officers on horseback.
He told us his meeting with the King and the president had gone well.
And he praised the King’s 60 years of campaigning on the environment.
When the doors of the Green Drawing Room opened in Windsor Castle, Grant Shapps, secretary of state for energy security and net zero, was there to welcome President Biden and King Charles.
Shapps talked about the importance of “climate finance” – finding ways to raise money to help tackle climate change, particularly in developing countries.
Climate envoy John Kerry, who was chatting to fellow guests at the King’s Coronation in May, was also on hand for the introductions.
In his pre-meeting briefings, did the president get told an unexpected piece of trivia about Grant Shapps? That he’s the cousin of Mick Jones of the iconic band, The Clash.
President Biden’s stop-over visit to the UK is on the way to a Nato summit in Lithuania.
The backdrop to this is the war in Ukraine – a subject on which King Charles has been unusually outspoken, particularly when he was still Prince of Wales. It seems to have become a very personal cause.
He has spoken of the “brutal aggression” of Russia’s invasion and has visited the Ukrainian community in London and went to Romania to show support for refugees who had come across the border.
On his first overseas state visit as monarch, the King hailed German support in opposing “unprovoked aggression” against Ukraine.
The conversation in Windsor will remain private, but you’d expect Ukraine to be an important issue for both men.
Joe Biden and King Charles are meeting now in Windsor Castle for the last of the US president’s engagements during his flying visit to the UK
A little earlier, he received a royal salute and listened to the US national anthem performed by the Welsh Guards before entering the castle for talks with the King.
“The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King” rang out across the grounds before they entered the castleImage caption: “The Star Spangled Banner” and “God Save the King” rang out across the grounds before they entered the castle
While King Charles and Joe Biden meet in Windsor, we can bring you some comments now from Downing Street about Rishi Sunak’s chat with the US president earlier.
A spokesman for the PM said Sunak and Biden discussed the US’ decision to supply controversial cluster bombs to Ukraine.
The weapons have been banned by more than 100 countries, including the UK, because of the danger they pose to civilians.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said it “was a difficult choice for the US” to provide the weapons and it had been “forced on them by Russia’s war of aggression”, PA media reports.
The spokesman said Sunak was upholding the UK’s requirements under an international convention banning the weapons.
Climate change will be one of the big issues that King Charles will discuss with US President Joe Biden as the pair meet now in Windsor.
The King has been an active advocate on climate issues for the past 50 years. Here’s a brief history of his campaigning:
He gave his first major speech on the environment in 1971. Aged 21, the then heir to the throne warned of the dangerous effects of oil, plastic and air pollution.
He later established the International Sustainability Unit in 2010 to address climate challenges, such as protecting the marine ecosystem.
He was a big presence at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021, where he pushed world leaders to work together to save the planet.
The King has also urged business leaders to make commitments to fighting climate change, and more than 500 executives are now part of his Sustainable Markets Initiative
And earlier this year, he co-wrote a children’s book on climate change.
King Charles has been meeting US presidents since he was a child. Like President Biden, he’s been around a long time.
In 1959, aged 10, the then Prince Charles was there when President Eisenhower met Queen Elizabeth II in Balmoral.
In 1970, when other young people were experimenting with flower power, Charles was in the White House, wearing a double-breasted suit, in a meeting with President Richard Nixon.
Mind you, President Biden has certainly crammed in a number of UK prime ministers in a short space of time.
When he was campaigning for the presidency in summer 2019 Theresa May was still PM, since then we’ve rattled through Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
The grass on the lawn inside Windsor Castle has been cut as neatly as a checkerboard, the Welsh Guards are lined up with careful symmetry. There is always intense security wherever the US president travels.
This meeting is with the King as head of state, acting on the advice of the government rather than as an individual host. It’s the exercise of soft power.
The US president will receive a royal salute from the Welsh Guards assembled in the castle’s courtyard and the American national anthem will be played.
This isn’t a state visit from the US president, but there will still be a ceremonial welcome at Windsor Castle.
There will be a guard of honour from the Welsh Guards to be inspected by the King and President Biden.
It might bring back memories of the time when Queen Elizabeth II tried to steer former President Donald Trump in the right direction during a similar inspection, with the late Queen appearing and disappearing from behind his direction of travel.
Once inside the castle the King and president will have a cup of tea, projecting a sense of cosy togetherness for the cameras, before they look at some US-related items from the Royal Collection.
And then, appropriately in the Green Drawing Room, they’ll meet people taking part in a summit about raising funds to tackle climate change.
When the King and President Biden meet at Windsor Castle they will spend some time on a theme that’s been important to both of them – tackling climate change.
The two of them met previously at the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in 2021, where the then Prince Charles had made an urgent call for action.
They also met at the G7 meeting in Cornwall – also in 2021 – when protecting the environment was a key theme.
In Windsor this afternoon they’ll join delegates who have been taking part in a forum to find ways to raise funds to help developing countries tackle climate change.
(BBC)
