This blog was highly critical of Theresa May’s invitation to Donald Trump to make a State Visit to the UK, when normally such visits are reserved for the second term as a kind of thank you, as the term heads into its final lap. There are good reasons for this. Not a lot of business happens at State visits, because everything is crowded out by ceremonial, which for such visits is on steroids.
In Trump’s case he is a highly controversial figure about whom a lot of nasty stuff had been said by senior members of the government in the UK, as well as by many special interest groups concerned with racial, gender and sexual equality, climate change and much else, during his campaign to win the White House. So all the more reason to have a business visit or two first, very necessary anyway when a new President takes office, so as to achieve some concrete outcomes and build relationships. Especially with Brexit.
May’s headstrong move when Trump had only been in office for 8 days, we realise now typical of her style of act now and think later, backfired. There were petitions and protests and in the end the President let it be known that he did not wish to come to the UK while the prospect of large scale protests remained real; as we know he is rather thin skinned. I imagine this caution was reinforced when May lost her election gamble. Trump would be loth to waste time with a leader here today and gone tomorrow. Meanwhile her tottering government, riven with splits of every sort and kind across almost its whole agenda, left the visit out of the Queen’s Speech, a protocol marker that it would not happen. For now.
There is rumour that, in a window of spare time between the G20 and his visit to France as guest of honour of the triumphant Macron for the Bastille Day celebrations, Trump is planning to visit his golf course in Scotland. There is no protocol for Presidents visiting their golf courses in the UK, because there has not been a previous President who owned one. But it seems a flying visit to May for a meeting in Downing Street as an add on to his golf course inspection might take place at 24 hours notice.
But then again it might not happen. This blog could be the victim of fake news.