Starmer goes big before Trump goes home 

LONDON — Keir Starmer has scored some wins in his relationship with Donald Trump. Now he is desperately trying to hold onto them.

The U.S. president arrives at the prime minister’s official country residence Chequers on Thursday for the working portion of his two-day U.K. visit after being showered with the showiest splendor Britain has to offer on the full first day of his state visit, as soldiers in bearskin hats and a marching band welcomed him and First Lady Melania Trump to Windsor Castle.

All the might of the royal household was focused on making this trip the biggest and best: An unprecedented second audience with the monarch accompanied by the largest guard of honor ever seen for such an occasion.

Starmer will up the ante by giving Trump his own bespoke ministerial “red box” as a gift — usually reserved for U.K. ministers, it sends a clear signal about where the power lies.

But the Labour leader, who is beset by his own domestic woes, will watch the ceremonial choreography even more nervously than normal as Downing Street desperately tries to shore up the goodwill it has built with the White House. 

One former senior U.S. government official — granted anonymity like others in this piece to speak candidly — said the rapport between the two men “should not be overplayed” but “there is a very highly functioning working relationship between them, and that’s pretty good right now because you don’t want the opposite.”

Starmer now just has to try to make sure all his efforts up to this point deliver on their early promise.

High-stakes chess

This week’s state visit is not a standalone occasion but part of a “steady drumbeat” of overtures from London to Washington, as one British diplomat put it.

With their very different temperaments and political instincts, Starmer’s team has been aware from the beginning that he and Trump would not be the easiest of bedfellows. They have thrown themselves at the task of smoothing relations, including by extending the invitation for a second state visit. 

In return, the British government has banked some apparent successes, including a deal for lower tariffs on some U.K. exports and Trump’s description of Starmer as a “good man.”

While state visits are always the subject of a painstaking planning operation, this one has been given even more care and attention, as No. 10 is keenly aware of what it has to lose.

A former aide to No.10 said: “We made big early wins in our relationship with the White House — and they were real wins — but we have to press that home now.”

Preparations began as soon as Trump accepted the invitation for the state visit in February, led by Buckingham Palace and military officials on the ceremonial side, with the civil service and government coordinating the policy side.

Peter Ricketts, a former ambassador and U.K. national security adviser, said: “Because the Trump presidency is hyper personalized — the view of the president at any particular time is so important — there is a lot of benefit in exposing him to the most high-impact, the most powerful expression of Britain that we can do.”

“Sleepless nights”

Careful coordination is all the more important this time round, not only because of the president’s propensity to go off script but because his visit coincides with a particularly nightmarish stretch for the British PM.

Starmer is currently trying to shrug off losing his deputy prime minister, his ambassador to the U.S. and another top aide in the space of a fortnight. His personal ratings are at an all-time low.

Paul Harrison, who as communications director for Theresa May helped coordinate the first Trump state visit, said that this trip, whenever it fell, would have caused “sleepless nights” inside No. 10 because the U.S. president is “uniquely unpredictable.”

But he observed that Starmer and Trump’s joint press conference on Thursday would be a moment of “maximum danger” which would only be heightened because “Trump likes winners, and it is possible that the relationship will come under some pressure as a result of recent events.”

A second British diplomat said people in Trump’s team were “unimpressed” by the scandal surrounding the abrupt departure of Britain’s ambassador to Washington over his support for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, viewing it as unnecessary noise which could detract from the state visit.

A No. 10 official insisted ahead of the visit that Mandelson’s sacking would have no impact on the event, which would see “an unbreakable friendship reach new heights.”

Could he pull it off?

Despite the winds of fortune not blowing in the prime minister’s direction lately, Trump’s descent on the U.K. could yet prove a boost to the prime minister.

The initial impressions of Trump’s traveling retinue suggested that the royal treatment was having the desired effect. One White House official commented: “It’s top of the line class and elegance — everything the Trumps love.”

The president may also be less attuned to Starmer’s political ills due to the extent to which Americans’ attention is currently consumed by the killing of Charlie Kirk and the question of how the Trump administration will respond. 

He might not care to resurface his own connections to the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein by wading into the Mandelson row either.

Even Nigel Farage, the leader of the insurgent right-wing party Reform UK, who usually delights in inflicting as much political pain on Starmer as possible, has been keeping a relatively low profile during the state visit. 

A Reform official shrugged off the suggestion he was lying low, pointing out that Farage had his own audience with Trump less than 10 days ago when he visited the U.S.

There is still plenty of time for things to go wrong, and Starmer will just have to hope that his luck is about to change.

Andrew McDonald, Annabelle Dickson and Emilio Casalicchio contributed reporting.