When President Donald Trump begins a state visit to Britain on Wednesday, it may feel like a holiday from history. For a few days, he will trade the US and its sulfurous politics for a fairy tale world of horse-drawn carriages, royal artillery salutes and an opulent banquet in Windsor Castle.
Trump leaves behind a country convulsed by the killing of his ally, the Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, and a White House unable to settle foreign conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. Britain hopes to use its gilded charms to nudge its guest in the preferred direction on a complex agenda including trans-Atlantic security and trade.
But it is far from clear that Trump will be interested in more than the pomp and pageantry. And his hosts, King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer, may not feel as shielded from the backwash of a messy world.
Last week, Starmer was forced to dismiss Britain's ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, over troubling revelations about his long-ago friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and convicted sex offender whose ties to Trump have generated their own battery of questions. While Trump has largely deflected those questions, the Epstein scandal still haunts the British royal family. Charles's younger brother Prince Andrew was forced into internal exile in 2019 and later stripped of his military titles after he fumbled questions about his friendship with Epstein.
British officials are determined not to let the sordid saga spoil the visit. They played down Mandelson's abrupt departure, saying that a British-American technology agreement he negotiated with the Trump administration, billed as the policy capstone of the visit, was signed and sealed.
Prince Andrew is not expected to take part in the ceremonies involving Trump and the royal family. Buckingham Palace instead plans to feature the king's eldest son, Prince William, and his wife, Catherine, Princess of Wales, who will play host to Trump's wife, Melania, at a meeting with young scouts.
Yet diplomats on both sides of the Atlantic said that the lingering questions were bound to sound a discordant note amid the visit's choreographed rituals. Trump's trip, after all, is all about symbolism: an imperial-minded President who relishes his ties to the royal family, being feted by an actual king.
"For him, this is personal," said Fiona Hill, a British-born foreign policy expert who served in Trump's first term and was involved in planning his earlier trips to Britain. "He's building his own dynasty. He wanted to forge those ties with the royal family because that's how he sees his own family."
New York Times News Service
