The King will put on a diplomatic tour de force for Donald Trump later this month on his mission to repair the UK’s “special relationship” with the US.
Charles III, who has known the President for several decades, is determined to do his duty in the hope a little royal stardust can remind Trump of the merits of a strong relationship with Britain.
State visits are always carried out at the request of the Government, as the foremost tool in the “soft power” capabilities of the UK.
But royal watchers and well-connected experts who pore over the subtle signals surrounding the visit suggest the timing of this particular trip may not have been entirely welcomed in the corridors of Buckingham Palace.
Most significantly, the announcement stating the trip was being undertaken “on advice of His Majesty’s Government” – a formulation that has not been used in at least 20 years – raised eyebrows in royal circles.
The Palace has declined to comment on suggestions of tensions between No10 and the Royal Household over Keir Starmer’s efforts to use the monarch to woo Trump.
But behind the scenes, Charles is believed to have expressed concerns over the UK’s relations with Trump during his second presidency.
Sources claim the King was unsure about the hurried public invitation for Trump to make a second state visit to Britain, made in February last year.
He was also reportedly unhappy at the US President’s recent criticism of Britain’s Armed Forces. An unconfirmed report also suggested the king had raised concerns over Starmer’s appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.
In spite of having very different temperaments and outlooks, Charles and Trump have forged warm and friendly personal ties.
Trump, 79, remains an Anglophile and an ardent admirer of the monarchy, but repairing an increasingly fractured diplomatic relationship between Britain and the US may be mission impossible, one which the King had little choice but to accept.
Charles, two years younger than Trump, will be tasked by the Government with using his and Queen Camilla’s visit to mark the 250th anniversary of US independence to shore up what remains of the “special relationship”, emphasising the two nations’ historic bonds in trade, transatlantic security and culture.
It is what constitutional monarchs do. The King’s late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had to entertain Uganda’s leader Idi Amin in 1971 shortly after he seized power, for example, and Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceauseșcu and his wife, Elena, in 1978.
So the King knows that whatever his personal views, he has a job to do.
The signs of unhappiness in the King’s camp
The King is characterised as a more political monarch than his mother.
However courtiers were said to have raised objections to Starmer theatrically producing a letter from the King inviting Trump to make a rare second state visit to Britain when he went to the White House in February 2025 shortly after his inauguration.
He was, according to some sources, unhappy about the invitation but ultimately the Palace had to agree to the Prime Minister’s request.
Similarly, there have been claims that when the Government sought the King’s formal approval for Mandelson to be made ambassador to Washington in December 2024, despite his long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, Charles raised concerns. Private Eye magazine suggested that a note was sent back from the Palace effectively asking: “Do you really think that’s wise?”
The Cabinet Office has insisted it has no record of any letter, note, memorandum, or other form of communication from the King expressing doubts about the appointment. “We can confirm from the Government side that no such letter exists. We have no record of anything like that,” a spokesman said.
But officials conceded to The i Paper that this did not rule out the King raising it internally with his own staff at the Palace or with the Prime Minister during one of their weekly audiences.
A source has insisted that a royal aide did convey the King’s concern over Mandelson’s appointment to the Government in a note, and in a second one prepared by the monarch’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, clarifying his opinion for one of their weekly audiences, which are supposed to remain confidential. Buckingham Palace has declined to comment.
As Commander-in-chief of Britain’s Armed Forces, the monarch was infuriated by Trump’s claims in January that British troops did nothing to help the US in previous conflicts. It is understood he conveyed his displeasure via the Foreign Office to the White House, prompting the President to soften his criticism.
But even that did not stop an onslaught of slurs from Trump, who has compared Starmer to Neville Chamberlain and said the Prime Minister is “no Winston Churchill”, prompting calls from Emily Thornberry and Lib Dem leader Ed Davey for the King’s US trip be postponed or cancelled.
In spite of it all, ministers and Government officials felt it was worse to pull out of the state visit than to send the King. The trip has been earmarked to take place in 2026 for several years although the precise dates were only confirmed much more recently.
But Buckingham Palace’s announcement of the trip, emphasising it would be undertaken “on advice of His Majesty’s Government”, has been taken as a sign of royal discomfort.
Francesca Jackson, a constitutional expert and postgraduate researcher at Lancaster University, said the wording “would indicate [the Palace] objected” to the upcoming visit. “Nevertheless, it seems that No 10 put its foot down and that was that,” she added.
In a blog post for the UK Constitutional Law Association which noted previous internal debates about controversial visits, she said it spoke volumes that it had been made so clear that it was the government’s decision. The i Paper has looked back as far as 2004 and found no such wording used for previous visits.
How much the King can achieve now is open for debate. “He and Trump have very different views on issues like the environment but the King is the consummate diplomat,” one royal source said. “I’m sure he will charm the pants off Donald Trump but all he can do is hope to emphasise the importance of the long-term relationship and the need for co-operation on security, Nato and Ukraine.
“I can’t see him rescuing Starmer’s relationship with Trump.”
Why traditional tactics aren’t guaranteed to work on Trump
The King’s grandfather, George VI and his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, are credited with helping to create the special relationship during their 1939 state visit hosted by President Franklin D Roosevelt, who famously invited them to a picnic where they ate hot dogs.
Roosevelt wanted to use the visit to start to warm an isolationist American public to the British royals, and to prepare public opinion for the eventual need to support Britain and other nations in the fight against fascism.
There have also been low points before in UK-US relations, after the Suez crisis in 1956 for example, and during the Vietnam War when Britain’s Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, refused to send troops to support the Americans.
However in Trump, the US has a very different sort of president, one sceptical about the transatlantic alliance despite polls suggesting the US public is still in favour of Nato.
“We’ve never had a president like him before,” the distinguished American royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith said. He has successfully tapped into US voter concern that Britain and other European nations needed to up defence spending instead of relying on US forces to protect them.
Bedell Smith suggested it would be a dereliction of duty by the King if he did not seek to emphasise the benefits of Nato and helping Ukraine against Russian aggression while he was in Washington. “I think it’s up to the King to find a way to put it in the most diplomatic way possible,” she said.
But Robert Jobson, another royal biographer, doubts that the King can change Trump’s mind on anything this time. “I think it will probably go in one ear and out the other,” he said, recalling how Charles spent 75 minutes longer than scheduled trying to convince Trump about the dangers of climate change during his first state visit to the UK in 2019.
“I think Trump will behave himself while the King is there but as soon as he’s gone and on the way to Bermuda he’ll have Starmer for breakfast. He’ll say he likes the King but doesn’t like Starmer.”
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