Diplomatic Coup or Abject Groveling? U.K. Debates Trump’s Royal Welcome

A masterful act of British diplomacy, deploying royal pomp, pageantry and ceremonial in pursuit of the national interest. Or a desperate example of groveling to a fickle American president with a frail ego.

Britain’s media was on Thursday divided in its interpretation of day one of the state visit, in which the red carpet was rolled out to President Trump with all the trappings at which British royalty excels.

Photos of a glittering banquet in Windsor Castle and of Mr. Trump’s procession through its grounds in a horse-drawn carriage adorned newspaper front pages. But the divide in perceptions was best illustrated by the front pages of two tabloids.

“The Special Bond,” ran the upbeat headline in The Sun, which reported that Mr. Trump’s speech at the state dinner on Wednesday evening praised the special relationship between the U.S. and Britain while the band had played the theme tune from the James Bond movies. The Sun, known for its conservative bent and sensational headlines, is part of News Corporation, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who attended the banquet.

By contrast, the Daily Mirror, a left-leaning paper, wrote on its front page: “The royals did their job. They smiled, laughed …. and massaged Trump’s frail ego.”

Those were the words of Russell Myers, the newspaper’s royal editor, who added on social media: “When Britain’s star has fallen so far and we are forced to grovel for recognition of the special relationship, our dutiful royals serve us well in desperate times.”

A more literary critique of the state visit appeared in The Guardian, where a poem by Carol Ann Duffy, one of the country’s most prominent poets and a former poet laureate, appeared to reimagine the ceremonial banquet taking place in a bomb site.

It did not explicitly mention Gaza, but was surely inspired by the contrast between the opulent state dinner and the worsening hunger crisis and suffering in the enclave as Israel escalates its military campaign there.

“Poached Sandringham venison with truffles to follow,

then Key Lime Pie, and among the wines,

Chateau Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande, 1990.

Yum-yum. Let the trumpets sound on the bomb site

as the great and the good pick their way through,

and a famished child peers through a bullet-hole in a wall.”

The war in Gaza was a prominent concern among many of those protesting against the state visit in London on Wednesday because of America’s seemingly unlimited support for Israel.

There were other complaints too, including from one unlikely demonstrator at the march, Max Hastings, the writer and former editor of the right-leaning Daily Telegraph. He was spotted by a BBC journalist as he walked alongside other protesters. When interviewed about his presence, Mr. Hastings accused Mr. Trump, who is unpopular in Britain, according to opinion polls, of wrecking the world order. “He’s a destroyer,” he said.

The other half of The Guardian’s front page focused on investments by American companies worth an estimated £150 billion to Britain, reporting that Prime Minister Keir Starmer hoped that this would placate critics of the state visit.

That underscored the extent to which much of the media saw Mr. Trump’s visit in pragmatic terms. “Britain wheels out the Windsors to play its royal Trump card,” read the headline of The Independent.

The next question is whether, when Mr. Trump departs on Air Force One later today, there will be sufficient political and diplomatic benefits to persuade the president’s many British critics that it was all worthwhile.