Joe Biden will hold a bilateral meeting with Rishi Sunak today after arriving in Northern Ireland last night to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
Mr Sunak greeted Mr Biden after Air Force One landed at Belfast International Airport for the US president’s four-day visit to the island of Ireland.
The two leaders met briefly before the president drove away in an armoured car amid a scattering of snow.
Mr Biden and Mr Sunak’s meeting will come before the US president meets the leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties.
However, the White House said there will not be a formal group meeting with the leaders.
The Stormont powersharing assembly, which was established in the Good Friday Agreement peace deal in 1998, is not currently operating due to a protest over post-Brexit trading arrangements by the DUP, the largest unionist party in Northern Ireland.
Following his meeting with party leaders, Mr Biden will deliver an address at Ulster University’s new £350m Belfast campus where his remarks will commemorate the Good Friday Agreement.
More on Joe Biden
Related Topics:
The peace deal largely ended 30 years of bloodshed between republicans and loyalists.
Image: President Joe Biden disembarks Air Force One
Mr Sunak will not attend Mr Biden’s keynote speech, with Downing Street on Tuesday denying that the engagement between the pair would be “low-key”.
Speaking to reporters before his departure, Mr Biden said that his top priority was to “make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor Agreement stay in place, keep the peace”.
His son Hunter Biden and sister Valerie Biden Owen are believed to be accompanying him for the trip.
A major security operation will be in place for Mr Biden’s Northern Ireland visit at an estimated cost of £7m.
Around 300 officers from other parts of the UK will travel to the area to help police a series of events to mark the anniversary.
Mr Biden will travel across the border to Ireland later today where he will tour Carlingford Castle in County Louth, an area to which he has traced his ancestral roots.
Then it’s off to Dublin, where he is expected to visit Irish President Michael D Higgins on Thursday.
Mr Biden will take part in a tree-planting ceremony and ringing of the Peace Bell at the president’s official residence, Aras an Uachtarain.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:39
Why is Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland significant?
Following that ceremony, he will meet the Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and address the Irish parliament.
A banquet dinner at Dublin Castle will follow on Thursday evening.
The president’s trip will end with a visit to County Mayo on Friday, where he has connected with distant cousins.
A descendant of Irish immigrants to the United States, Mr Biden will deliver remarks at St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina, County Mayo, to which his great-great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt sold 27,000 bricks in 1827.
The bricks were used to build the cathedral and their sale helped to fund Mr Blewitt’s passage to the US with his family in 1851.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:55
What is the Good Friday Agreement?
The president’s trip comes at an uncertain time for Northern Ireland, where power sharing in Stormont is still on hold and the terror threat has been raised to severe – meaning an attack is highly likely.
There were some disturbances on Easter Monday when petrol bombs were thrown at an armoured police Land Rover in Creggan during what police described as an “unnotified” march by dissident republicans.
The father of a two-week-old baby has been found guilty of murdering him in hospital.
Daniel Gunter, 27, killed his son, Brendon Staddon, on 5 March 2024, a jury at Bristol Crown Court has concluded.
Baby Brendon suffered “catastrophic injuries” to his head, neck, legs and jaw, while he was a patient at the special care baby unit at Yeovil District Hospital in Somerset.
The jury found Gunter guilty of his son’s murder, but the baby’s mother, Gunter’s former partner Sophie Staddon, 23, was cleared of causing or allowing the death of a child.
Image: Brendon Staddon.
Pic: Avon and Somerset Police
Staddon was previously found not guilty of murder, and Gunter was cleared of causing or allowing the death of a child on the direction of the trial judge, Mr Justice Swift.
The defendants showed no emotion as the verdicts were returned.
“Daniel Gunter, you have been found guilty of murder. You will be remanded into custody pending the sentencing hearing,” the judge said.
More on Crime
Related Topics:
“Sophie Staddon, you have been acquitted by the jury. Your bail will no longer be necessary, and you are free to go.”
Gunter, of no fixed address, will be sentenced on a later date yet to be fixed.
The court heard hospital staff had discovered Brendan’s serious injuries after Staddon told nurses her son was cold and asked them to check on him around 4am.
But while staff rushed to Brendon’s cot to try and save him, his parents walked outside for a cigarette, Charles Row KC, prosecuting, said during the three-week trial.
Image: Baby Brendon was killed while a patient at Yeovil District Hospital. Pic: Shutterstock
He said Brendon was found with his baby grow open, and staff soon realised he had suffered devastating injuries.
“In plain language, his head had been crushed so as to shatter his skull. He was badly bruised from head to toe, with deep scratches in his neck,” Mr Row said.
“He was later found to have, amongst other injuries, a broken neck, a broken jaw, broken legs, broken ankles and broken wrists.”
Staff carried the baby’s “limp, lifeless body” to the resuscitation area, but Brendon did not respond to treatment.
His parents were arrested by police outside the hospital as they were smoking.
Social services and Gunter’s family had raised concerns about the couple’s “lack of emotional warmth” toward their child before his death, Mr Row said.
A post-mortem examination found Brendon died of “blunt force impact(s) head injury” with multiple non-accidental injuries to the head.
The prosecution said during the trial that the jury needed to understand the “sheer brutality” involved in Brendon’s death, with Mr Row adding that “there was hardly a part of his body that was spared”.
Two children and a woman who died in a shooting in County Fermanagh have been named.
Vanessa Whyte, 45, and her two children, Sara Rutledge, aged 13, and 14-year-old James Rutledge, died in the shooting on Wednesday morning, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) said.
A man, who is a member of the same household, was seriously injured in the shooting in the village of Maguiresbridge, about 75 miles (120km) southwest of Belfast.
Police launched a murder investigation, and Detective Chief Inspector Neil McGuinness asked people with information about the shooting incident to contact police.
Image: The scene in the Drummeer Road area of Maguiresbridge, Co Fermanagh, after three people died in a shooting. Pic: Oliver McVeigh /PA Wire
“I am particularly keen to hear from anyone who had spoken to Vanessa, Sara or James over the last few weeks. If you are someone that Vanessa, Sara or James may have confided in, please come and speak to us,” he said.
“Any information, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem could prove crucial to our investigation.”
Police don’t anticipate any arrests being made at this stage, Superintendent Robert McGowan, district commander for Fermanagh and Omagh, said at a news conference on Wednesday.
Emergency services were called to the Drummeer Road area of Maguiresbridge at around 8am on Wednesday following a report raised from the property.
Two people were found dead at the scene, and two others were seriously injured.
One patient was taken to the Royal Victoria Hospital, Belfast, by air ambulance and the other to South West Acute Hospital by ambulance. Supt McGowan said the third person died at the South West Acute Hospital.
Image: Maguiresbridge
A local Gaelic football club said the victims were all “active and beloved” members of their club.
Sara and James Rutledge also used to be part of a local cricket club, which said in a statement that it was “extremely saddened by the tragic events”.
“Both of them turned out to be talented young cricketers and two absolutely lovely-natured children,” the statement read.
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn said: “The news from Maguiresbridge is tragic and deeply distressing.
“My thoughts are with the victims, their relatives and the local community in Fermanagh.”
Image: The scene was cordoned off by police following the shooting on Wednesday morning. Pic: Oliver McVeigh /PA Wire
Sinn Fein MP Pat Cullen has expressed her deep shock over the shooting.
“I’m also thinking of all the wee school friends of those two wee children and what that must feel like for all of them and how the next few days and weeks will be for everyone, particularly just at the beginning of the school holidays,” she said.
DUP MLA Deborah Erskine, who represents Co Fermanagh in the Northern Ireland Assembly, said that the community was “stunned” by the shooting in “a rural, quiet area”.
This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.
Please refresh the page for the fullest version.
You can receive Breaking News alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News App. You can also follow @SkyNews on X or subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.
Welfare versus warfare: for decades, it’s a question to which successive prime ministers have responded with one answer.
After the end of the Cold War, leaders across the West banked the so-called “peace dividend” that came with the end of this conflict between Washington and Moscow.
Instead of funding their armies, they invested in the welfare state and public services instead.
But now the tussle over this question is something that the current prime minister is grappling with, and it is shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges for Sir Keir Starmer since he got the job last year.
As Clement Attlee became the Labour prime minister credited with creating the welfare state after the end of the Second World War, so it now falls on the shoulders of the current Labour leader to create the warfare state as Europe rearms.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:15
UK to buy nuclear-carrying jets
Be it Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, arguing last year that Europe had moved from the post-war era to the pre-war era; or European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen calling on the EU to urgently rearm Ukraine so it is a “steel porcupine” against Russian invaders; there is a consensus that the UK and Europe are on – to quote Sir Keir – a “war footing” and must spend more on defence.
To that end the prime minister has committed to increase UK defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2027, raiding the overseas development aid budget to do so, and has also committed, alongside other NATO allies, to spend 5% of GDP on defence by 2035.
More on Defence
Related Topics:
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:05
What is NATO’s 5% defence spending goal?
That is a huge leap in funding and a profound shift from what have been the priorities for government spending – the NHS, welfare and education – in recent decades.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Carl Emmerson said the increase, in today’s terms, would be like adding approximately £30bn to the 2027 target of spending around £75bn on core defence.
Sir Keir has been clear-eyed about the decision, arguing that the first duty of any prime minister is to keep his people safe.
But the pledge has raised the obvious questions about how those choices are funded, and whether other public services will face cuts at a time when the UK’s economic growth is sluggish and public finances are under pressure.
This, then, is one of his biggest challenges: can he make sure Britain looks after itself in a fragile world, while also sticking to his promises to deliver for the country?
It is on this that the prime minister has come unstuck over the summer, as he was forced to back down over proposed welfare cuts to the tune of £5bn at the end of this term, in the face of a huge backbench rebellion. Many of his MPs want warfare and welfare.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:11
Starmer and Merz sign deal on defence and migration
“There’s been a real collision in recent weeks between those two policy worlds,” explains Jim Murphy, who served both as a welfare minister under Tony Blair and shadow defence secretary under Ed Miliband.
“In welfare, how do you provide for the people who genuinely need support and who, without the state’s support, couldn’t survive? What’s the interplay between that and the unconditional strategic need to invest more in defence?
“For the government, they either get economic growth or they have a series of eye-watering choices in which there can be no compromise with the defence of the state and everything else faces very serious financial pressures.”
He added: “No Labour politician comes into politics to cut welfare, schools or other budgets. But on the basis that defence is non-negotiable, everything else, unfortunately, may face those cuts.”
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
7:02
‘There are lines I will not cross’
While the PM sees this clearly, ask around the cabinet table and ministers will admit that the tough choices society will need to take if they genuinely want to respond to the growing threat from Russia, compounded by the unpredictability of Donald Trump, is yet to fully sink in.
There are generations of British citizens that have only ever lived in peace, that do not, like I do, remember the Cold War or The Troubles.
There are also millions of Britons struggling with the cost of living and and public satisfaction with key public services is at historic lows. That is why Labour campaigned in the election on the promise of change, to raise living standards and cut NHS waiting lists.
Ask the public, and 49% of people recognise defence spending needs to increase. But 53% don’t want it to come from other areas of public spending, while 55% are opposed to paying more tax to fund that defence increase.
There is also significant political resistance from the Labour Party.
Sir Keir’s attempts to make savings in the welfare budget have been roundly rejected by his MPs. Instead, his backbenchers are talking about more tax rises to fund public services, or even a broader rethink of Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
6:36
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal dilemma
Anneliese Dodds, who quit as development minister over cuts to the overseas aid budget, wrote in her resignation letter that she had “expected [cabinet] would collectively discuss our fiscal rules and approach to taxation, as other nations are doing”, as part of a wider discussion about the changing threats.
In an interview for our Electoral Dysfunctionpodcast, which will be released later this summer, she expanded on this idea.
She said: “I think it’s really important to take a step back and think about what’s going to be necessary, looking 10, 20 years ahead. It looks like the world is not going to become safer, unfortunately, during that period. It’s really important that we increase defence spending.
“I think that does mean we’ve got to really carefully consider those issues about our fiscal rules and about taxation. That isn’t easy… nonetheless, I think we will have to face up to some really big issues.
“Now is the time when we need to look at what other countries are doing. We need to consider whether we have the right system in place.”
Image: Anneliese Dodds quit the government over cuts to the overseas aid budget. Pic: PA
For the Labour MP, that means potentially reassessing the fiscal rules and how the fiscal watchdog assesses government spending to perhaps give the government more leeway. She also believes that the government should look again at tax rises.
She added: “We do, I believe, need to think about taxation.
“Now again, there’s no magic wand. There will be implications from any change that would be made. As I said before, we are quite highly taxing working people now, but I think there are ways in which we can look at taxation, not without implications.
“But in a world of difficult trade-offs, we’ve got to take the least worst trade-off for the long term. And that’s what I think is gonna be really important.”
Those trade-offs are going to be discussed more and more into the autumn, ahead of what is looking like an extremely difficult budget for the PM and Ms Reeves.
Image: Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer are facing difficult choices. Pic: PA
Not only is the chancellor now dealing with a £5bn shortfall in her accounts from the welfare reform reversal, but she is also dealing with higher-than-expected borrowing costs, fuelled by surging debt costs.
Plus, government borrowing was £3.5bn more than forecast last month, with June’s borrowing coming in at £20.7bn – the second-highest figure since records began in 1993.
Some economists are now predicting that the chancellor will have to raise taxes or cut spending by around £20bn in the budget to fill the growing black hole.
Image: Former chancellor Jeremy Hunt says Labour’s U-turn on cuts to welfare risk trapping Britain in a ‘doom loop’
Jeremy Hunt, former Conservative chancellor and now backbencher, tells me he was “massively disappointed” that Labour blinked on welfare reform.
He said: “First of all, it’s terrible for people who are currently trapped on welfare, but secondly, because the risk is that the consequence of that, is that we get trapped in a doom loop of very higher taxes and lower growth.”
‘This group of politicians have everything harder ‘
Mr Murphy says he has sympathy for the predicament of this Labour government and the task they face.
He explained: “We were fortunate [back in the early 2000s] in that the economy was still relatively okay, and we were able to reform welfare and do really difficult reforms. This is another world.
“This group of politicians have everything harder than we had. They’ve got an economy that has been contracting, public services post-COVID in trouble, a restless public, a digital media, an American president who is at best unreliable, a Russian president.
“Back then [in the 2000s] it was inconceivable that we would fight a war with Russia. On every measure, this group of politicians have everything harder than we ever had.”
Over the summer and into the autumn, the drumbeat of tax rises will only get louder, particularly amongst a parliamentary party seemingly unwilling to back spending cuts.
But that just delays a problem unresolved, which is how a government begins to spend billions more on defence whilst also trying to maintain a welfare state and rebuild public services.
This is why the government is pinning so much hope onto economic growth as it’s escape route out of its intractable problem. Because without real economic growth to help pay for public services, the government will have to make a choice – and warfare will win out.
What is still very unclear is how Sir Keir manages to take his party and the people with him.