The King is ready to use the Royal Family’s much-vaunted soft power to help smooth relations between Britain and Donald Trump’s incoming US administration.
Keir Starmer has been working closely with the monarch on the international stage since July but Trump’s promise to shake up the world order now presents a serious challenge to the oft-cited special relationship between the two countries.
Quite how much King Charles or his family can do to help remains to be seen but once the new president takes office in January it is likely that the royals will be deployed to help get over Britain’s world view to the new US president.
The 75-year-old monarch has known Donald and Melania Trump and their children for years and, while they disagree on the threat from climate change and there are potential tensions on numerous other issues – not least Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – their personal friendship may stand the UK in good stead.
Starmer and his colleagues have spent the past few months trying to build ties with Trump and his team but face a few bumps in the road ahead.
Trump’s closeness to Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage and Elon Musk – the billionaire X owner who has criticised Starmer over his handling of this summer’s race riots and claims of two-tier policing, and now inheritance tax raids on farmers – is a potential problem.
A row over Labour sending 100 current or former staff across the Atlantic to campaign for Kamala Harris in their spare time has not helped the new Government’s relationship with the incoming Republican administration. Nor has previous criticism of Trump from senior Labour figures, including the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, former frontbencher Emily Thornberry, and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Some British diplomats have privately expressed frustration with what they see as the new Government’s naivety and missteps, as well as the foreign affairs inexperience of Lammy and his ministerial team. But then others have pointed out that other world leaders have made similar criticism of Trump and survived: Johnson, for example, worked well with Trump despite describing him as “clearly out of his mind” and “unfit for office” a year before he was elected president the first time.
Britain’s highly-rated ambassador in Washington, Dame Karen Pierce, has been building ties with Trump and his team on behalf of the new government in London. Appointed in 2020, she worked with his first administration and has pushed Britain’s policies to his base support via her appearances on Fox News.
But the royals can bring an extra element of diplomacy, via official and state visits, informal chats, and meetings at international gatherings. Trump owns a golf course near Aberdeen. Might a private trip to Scotland allow the King to entertain him over tea at Balmoral? Time will tell.
The US president might also be persuaded stop over in Britain en route to a Nato summit in The Hague next June or come to London on a European tour in his first year in office.
Evie Aspinall, director of the British Foreign Policy Group think-tank, said there would be much that the Starmer and Trump administrations would disagree on in the next few years so the UK would have to be creative in its diplomacy.
“I do think that the Royal Family is a really good way for the UK to strengthen relations, not least because, Donald Trump, he loves family, he loves the pomp of the monarchy and I think that’s an exciting way for him to feel important,” she said. “Being seen to be recognised by the Royal Family is something, I think, that he would like. So actually the more we can bring in people like King Charles, who he particularly likes, I think there’s an opportunity to get a basis of strong relations from that.”
David Lammy suggested an inbound state visit might come later in Trump’s presidency, even though the precedent for previous second-term presidents such as George W Bush and Barack Obama was tea or lunch at Windsor Castle with the monarch.
The Foreign Secretary, who met Trump for dinner in New York in September despite his previous criticism, told the BBC’s Newscast podcast: “State visits take a while to organise. So in the next year, I’ve got to tell you, I think that would be a bit of a tall order.
“But he was genuine in his respect and his affection for the Royal Family. It is always the case that as head of state the King plays an important role.
“We want to be generous with our American friends and as they will be, I imagine with us, particularly in a second term.”
In his first term as president, Trump, now 78, came to Britain three times – in July 2018 when he and his First Lady, Melania, had tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle; on a state visit in June 2019 during which Charles talked to him about climate change; and in December 2019 for a Nato summit.
During the state visit, which coincided with the 75th anniversary of D-Day, Trump was clearly in awe of Queen Elizabeth II and spoke respectfully about Charles’s views on climate change, even though he has described it as “a big hoax”.
“In some ways it’s easier for someone like the King to have that conversation than a fellow politician like Starmer, who for Trump is less important because he doesn’t have that long hereditary establishment reputation,” Aspinall said.
Still, few inside the Royal Household or the Foreign Office would seriously argue that the King could dramatically change the president’s views and intention, for example, to drill for oil, gas and coal in wilderness areas and drop climate change goals. The best they can hope for is to amplify the UK message and perhaps soften things around the edges.
Trump at least seems more interested in the UK and the monarchy than Harris. In her memoir published last month, his wife Melania wrote how she first met the then Prince of Wales in 2005 and how she and her husband still correspond with Charles after their earlier visits to Britain. “Our friendship with the Royal Family continues and we exchange letters to this day,” she wrote.
In July it emerged that the monarch wrote to Trump after he was shot in an assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania. The president-elect has described Charles as “a really wonderful guy”.
Eric Trump, whose mother was Donald’s first wife, Ivana, told the Daily Mail: “I can tell you that our father and our entire family has tremendous respect for the monarchy.”
He added: “We’ve known the King for ever. In fact, I was just digging through a photo album not too long ago and I came across a great picture of him literally with my father. I’m probably six years old in the lobby of Mar-a-Lago, in the front entrance of Mar-a-Lago, and it’s special.”
His father takes a dimmer view of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, who before she joined the Royal Family described Trump as “divisive” and a “misogynist”.
Trump felt the couple had broken the then Queen’s heart by quitting and criticising the institution of the monarchy. “She was unbelievable and I thought she was treated very disrespectfully by them,” he said.
In 2020 Trump was annoyed by the Sussexes’ efforts to promote voter registration, believing they were interfering and encouraging people more likely to vote Democrat. Buckingham Palace officials were furious too because they felt the couple had endangered British efforts to win a post-Brexit trade deal with the US.
It did not help that Harry was tricked into telling Russian hoax callers he believed to be the Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg and a colleague that the world was led by some very sick people. “I don’t mind saying this to you guys, I think the mere fact that Donald Trump is pushing the coal industry so big in America, he has blood on his hands,” Harry said.
Trump has made veiled threats to kick Harry out of the US over references to drug-taking in his memoir, Spare – a potential problem if he lied about it on his visa application. “We’ll have to see if they know something about the drugs and if he lied, they’ll have to take appropriate action,” he told Nigel Farage on GB News in March.
His antipathy towards the Sussexes plays to his base in the US and may add to the strains in the relationship between the King and his younger son but his son Eric has since suggested that Harry is safe from deportation because “no one cares” about him.
The Heritage Foundation conservative think-tank is increasingly confident that a Trump administration will publish Harry’s visa application and help it have him deported if he lied about his previous drug use.
Earlier this week, Nile Gardiner, director of the foundation’s Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, said he believed there was now a “strong possibility” that the think-tank would be able to successfully appeal against the Biden administration’s refusal to release Harry’s visa paperwork.
“I do think there’s a strong possibility that this could happen. It’s the president’s prerogative,” he said.
Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams felt Trump had bigger priorities than deporting Harry but warned: “If he is provoked, it could get very messy.
“The whole thought of a member of the Royal Family being thrown out of the United States, especially given the special relationship, it would be very embarrassing for the Royal Family,” he said.
Fitzwilliams pointed to reports that the California-based couple have bought a property in Portugal. “They have got the house in Portugal as a bolt hole if they need it,” he said. “I’ve no idea if that’s why they bought it but the optics can be twisted to look that way.”
However, another longtime professional royal watcher, Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty magazine, insisted: “I think Trump will have bigger priorities than the Sussexes on the west coast.”
Eric also spoke glowingly of the Prince and Princess of Wales, who would undoubtedly attract crowds and prove popular if Kate’s gradual recovery from cancer, like that of the King, allowed a visit next year or during Trump’s four-year term.
William was in New York last year for a week of environmental events and in Boston with Kate the year before for his Earthshot Prize awards ceremony but the couple are overdue a wider US tour. Like his father, however, he has strong views on climate change. Lord Hague, the former foreign secretary and a prominent Tory critic of Trump, chairs his and Kate’s Royal Foundation.
Charles has visited the US many times but his mother was the last monarch to tour the US on a state visit in 2007. In line with the usual practice, the King will wait to send a private congratulatory message to Trump on his inauguration day in January. Palace officials will not rule out a royal visit to the US or the King hosting Trump on a trip to Britain next year but there is a long list of other potential destinations.
“That’s really a matter for the Government and its priorities. We’ll act on their advice,” one senior royal aide said.
One British diplomat warned that, while a royal visit can help improve the “atmospherics” and relations between the two countries in the short term for a while, the long-term benefits are often very difficult to measure.