Trump’s Love of UK Royalty Is Starmer’s Best Hope of Making Ties Special Again

US President Trump at Windsor Castle in 2018. Photographer: Richard Pohle/WPA Pool/Getty Images Photo by WPA Pool /Getty Images

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(Bloomberg) — As soon as Donald Trump and Keir Starmer spoke for the first time last year, the nature of the US president’s affinity for Britain was clear.

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“I love the UK, I love the Royal Family, I love the King,” he told Starmer within minutes of the British premier calling him to offer his support in the days after Trump was shot at during a campaign rally.

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That affection has been leveraged by the British state in the months since Trump retook the White House, in order to curry favor with an unpredictable leader prone to picking fights with allies that often result in diplomatic and economic strains. 

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During his visit to the White House in February, Starmer brandished a hand-signed letter from King Charles III inviting the president to a “really special, unprecedented” second state visit to Britain, after he was hosted by Queen Elizabeth II during his first term. Trump loved it: “That’s a great, great honor.” 

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According to royal biographer Hugo Vickers, the prime minister “was playing to Trump’s Achilles heel,” with King Charles used as bait to lure him across the Atlantic. “The reason there’s a second state visit is because Starmer wants it for political reasons, so he’s using the King as his diplomat,” said Vickers. 

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Since then, the visit has been fast-tracked to this week. It comes on the back of a turbulent period for Starmer, most notably with his dismissal of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador in Washington after the emergence of damaging emails detailing Mandelson’s links to deceased convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Whether the timing of the president’s trip is fortuitous or not will soon become clear.  

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It will be Trump’s second visit in two months, after the UK helped facilitate his trip to Scotland in July, which the president mostly used as an opportunity to promote his two golf resorts.

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It may well be seen as the brazen deployment of a diplomatic tool unique to the UK, and perhaps a few other monarchies, but it’s paid dividends for Starmer’s government. Britain was the first country to strike a trade agreement with the US that saw it avoid the same severity of tariffs faced by other allies.

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Starmer’s charm offensive — alongside others by the likes of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and Finland’s President Alexander Stubb — has also arguably helped soften Trump’s approach toward Ukraine, where at times he’s appeared to lean more into Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s view of the conflict than Europe’s.

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The visit will primarily take place at Windsor Castle to the west of London, rather than the usual venue, Buckingham Palace, where Trump’s first state visit took place in 2019. While that’s ostensibly due to ongoing renovations, it also has the benefit of avoiding the president being confronted by mass protests that have been called against him and his MAGA policies.  

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Away from the capital, the president and First Lady Melania Trump will be met by the King and Queen Camilla in the grounds of Windsor, before taking a carriage procession through the estate together with the Prince and Princess of Wales.