As the US continues to attack Iran and Donald Trump continues to criticise Keir Starmer, calls are growing to delay or cancel King Charles’ state visit to America.
The visit hasn’t yet been formally announced but Buckingham Palace has been preparing for the King to visit Washington and New York in April, to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence. The hope was that the visit, the first by a British sovereign in nearly two decades, would help smooth fractured relations between the two nations.
But as violence in the Middle East intensifies, it may be “safer to delay it”, said Labour’s Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs committee. It would be going ahead “against a backdrop of a war and that, I think, is quite difficult”, she told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme. “The last thing that we want to do is to have their majesties embarrassed.”
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“While the war is continuing”, the visit is “problematic”, said Peter Westmacott, former British diplomat and former deputy private secretary to King Charles. The US is conducting a war that the UK “initially thought clearly was illegal”, he told The Times. The UK government has “a duty to protect the monarchy in a situation like this”, and “a duty to reflect public opinion in this country”. How will a state visit be perceived? Might the King appear to be “endorsing” what the US president is doing?
Nearly half (46%) of Britons think the visit should definitely be cancelled, according to a YouGov poll of 12,002 adults last week. Ed Davey, leader of the Liberal Democrats, has said going ahead with it would hand a “huge diplomatic coup” to Trump. But postponing, rather than cancelling, is the way to avoid offending “thin-skinned” Trump and protect the “special relationship”, said Westmacott. That’s “a statesmanlike way of managing the issue”.
A state visit would “be nothing but a show of political appeasement” towards an administration that is “leaning more towards authoritarian instincts every day”, said Alex Hannaford in The Independent. It is “betraying the very values” of democracy that America’s 250th birthday is meant to celebrate. Plus, the timing “could not be more fraught” for the King. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest last month “reignited the Epstein scandal”, and the “spectre of awkward questions” from victims’ lawyers and advocacy groups “looms over the visit”.
The case for cancelling is indeed “powerful”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. Trump will certainly “exploit a royal visit” for personal gain. But if the King didn’t go, it might seem “prompted by domestic politics” and would be “a severe blow to Anglo-American relations”. It would be “better by far” to “elevate it well above the level of current events” and let it honour the tight links between Britons and Americans that have held since US independence. A state visit is “a bonding of nations”, not governments.
What next?
Trump said yesterday that Charles would be visiting “very shortly”. Hosting Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin at the White House, he told reporters: “I do look forward to seeing the King.”
Official travel by the King and Queen is subject to the approval and advice of the government. Downing Street’s current refusal to comment on the matter “suggests an understandable indecision”, said The Guardian’s Jenkins. All could depend on how long the war continues. “Leaving the question open might add to pressure on Trump for an early ceasefire.”
Downing Street won’t want to risk “subjecting the monarch to Trump’s frequent rants against Britain”, Westmacott told CNN. Nor will it want to risk “angering the president” by cancelling. Still, “there could be a moment when the government decides that the risks of going ahead are greater than the risk of causing offence”.
