King Charles is the ideal man at the ideal time to visit America. Imagine, for a moment, if it was Keir Starmer on this difficult mission to make nice with Donald Trump – “no Churchill” as the president, entirely wrongly, derided him.
Imagine if it was Starmer who found himself ambushed in the Oval Office as Volodymyr Zelensky was a year ago, humiliated for being a freeloader and a coward who’s destroying his country with his soft immigration policy and radical, Islamo-green agenda… that sort of stuff.
Whatever else, Trump won’t do anything like that to the King and Queen, about the only living people on earth he treats with anything like deference.
Even if the King weren’t an expert diplomat, and able to confine his contributions on policy to private thoughts voiced in the most gentle manner, Trump would be unlikely to attack him, or even make any offensive wisecracks. To Trump, “he’s a friend of mine and a great gentlemen”.
Obviously, the president will try and make out that the King agrees with him about everything, is secretly a Maga supporter, and it’d be better all round if Starmer were replaced by His Majesty – but the King should be well prepared for any such off-script moments, too. Flattering as it may be, the King can pointedly remind his hosts that he’s not George III, and that sort of constitutional set-up was why the 13 states broke away from the United Kingdom some 250 years ago.
The moment is also ideal for this celebration of transatlantic relations simply because they are under so much obvious strain, and need fixing. The King can’t do that – but he can use his visit to underscore all the cultural, historical, scientific, business and personal links that transcend politics and the personal chemistry (or lack of it) between here-today-gone-tomorrow presidents and prime ministers.
The King will stress the more permanent positives in the special relationship – shared values, consonant national interests, an understanding based on a (mostly) common language and set of social mores. He will acknowledge the contemporary challenges faced by us all. There will be amicable toasts and gracious speeches. It should go off well.
The visit comes in the aftermath of a third assassination attempt, which is also why this trip is “ideal” – in the sense that it should actually boost the affinity between these two seasoned men, born around the same time after the Second World War. Trump has survived three assassination attempts, and Charles has had a few scrapes of his own, which he can share his reflections on.
There was the time when a man with a starting pistol fired two blank shots at close range when he was Prince of Wales on a visit to Australia back in 1994. We now know, thanks to the informer Sean O’Callaghan, that there was an IRA plot to murder him and Princess Diana at a theatre in 1983, using a bomb with a long timer, such as the one that almost finished off Margaret Thatcher a few months later (his great-uncle and mentor, Lord Mountbatten, was not so fortunate).
The King might also chat to the president about the time his sister, Princess Anne, thwarted a kidnap attempt, as well as his mother’s various encounters with would-be assassins, including being stalked by one in Windsor with a loaded crossbow.
These would all be more congenial topics of conversation than the disputed sovereignty of the Falkland Islands or the inconvenient realities of climate change. The conversational Cerberus of Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson will be easily kept chained up and well away. Having met Trump a few times, the King will have the measure of him by now – ghastly, but unavoidable. He’ll sense how far he can push him, which topics to avoid, and that anything he says, even in confidence, could be dredged up in some late-night social media post or to entertain donors at some Republican fundraising rally. He’s not going to try and be what Trump calls a “wise guy”; he’ll be the perfect guest.
If it goes horribly wrong – and it still might – at least it won’t be for the King’s want of trying.
