They came for the afternoon tea and got the best of British in every sense. The US State Visit began with an intimate spread for 650 at the embassy in Washington. They got delicacies from all parts of the UK, Scottish smoked salmon, West Country cheddar, scones, clotted cream, the works. But they also got the reassuring presence of HM King and Queen in a week when it’s never been more needed.
After the shooting at the Whitehall Correspondents dinner there were questions about whether the visit should be cancelled or postponed. Not in a million years. It is at times of uncertainty or anxiety that we need certainty more than ever. There is no one better to provide that. Time moves differently around the Royals; people walk slower; everything feels more measured and calm.
In my last stint in the civil service I quite often found myself in the quiet rooms and corridors of Buckingham Palace. There were serious challenges to the State in 2018-2021 but in the Palace everything always seemed a bit more manageable. There is something about the hush created by the deep carpets and full curtains, the softly ticking clocks. So many clocks! It was comforting to think that there had been challenges before and would be challenges after and in the end it would probably all continue to be fine.
The Royal Family is a steadfast presence not just in the lives of people in the UK. State visits punctuate the lives of other countries too. I was talking to a US friend who could remember all of the Royal visits by her own milestones; when Diana danced with John Travolta she was at kindergarten; in 6th Grade she’d sat in her classroom and watched the late Queen Elizabeth II address a joint session of congress; and she got married in 2007 in the week that Queen was back again to visit President George W Bush and the Kentucky Derby.
The quiet, measured and ordered calm of what we see on TV belies a lot of work behind the scenes. The painstaking preparations for the visit have been going on for months. There is a predictable pattern to a lot of it, including expecting the unexpected. There are people in the Palace and in Whitehall that spend their whole lives becoming deeply expert at the protocol and the planning and the contingencies on contingencies for these kind of events. They are not ever surprised by the weather. They have a spare of anything. In the lulls between the big occasions, these are the people you want to know because, as well as being dependable for the odd paracetamol, they have magic advice on any potentially awkward social situation. Solid gold – including on gifting. See the magnificent present the King made President Trump of a submarine bell from WW2. So shiny!
There is always the unexpected. The King and Queen are staying with our ambassador Christian Turner and his family. This was supposed to be the easy bit. Christian is the template diplomat, a safe pair of hands sent to replace the previous Ambassador Peter Mandelson who left under a cloud last Autumn. Thank goodness, the planners must have thought, at least we don’t have to worry that at some point in the future our Royal Majesties will face probing questions about exactly what lunches and dinners they had with Mandelson – unlike the Prime Minister’s former chief of staff. The latter, Morgan McSweeney, spent hours before a committee in the House of Commons yesterday and, alongside revealing the person most pro the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US Ambassador had been Peter Mandelson himself, had to go into some detail about various meals they had taken together.
Unfortunately, some ill-advised remarks about the special relationship Christian made to some UK sixth-form students visiting the US; off camera, off the record, were leaked to the press and are embarrassing for everyone. In a leaked audio recording of Christian’s meeting with them, he can be heard saying: “‘Special relationship’ is a phrase I try not to utter because it’s quite nostalgic, it’s quite backwards-looking, and it has a lot of sort of baggage about it,” before going on to say the US’s special relationship is “probably Israel”. So much for the easy bit. And trusting school children to keep schtum. I could have told him that.
Despite all the planning there are always things that change and to react to. HM King has given us a masterclass in diplomacy and face management. Being 1:1 with President Trump is no easy ride. In the speech he gave at the dinner following his statement to congress he even managed to slip in some excellent jokes – comparing Trump’s creation of a huge new ballroom with the “small attempt at real estate redevelopment of the White House in 1814” when the British Army raised it to the ground. We’ve had our ups and downs.
And so as the visit draws to a close it’s congratulations all round despite the fact that things that haven’t been as expected. The caravan rumbles on. The pictures look fantastic. It’s so very cheering to see the King, glass in hand at a garden party, laughing away. It’s so very heartening that the Royal magic still works in the US. It’s nice to look forward to the next time.
Helen MacNamara is a former deputy cabinet secretary and co-hosts The Independent’s politics podcast, ‘In the Room’, with Cleo Watson, a former deputy chief of staff to Boris Johnson. New episodes come out every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube
