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The president was feted by King Charles III with the sort of pageantry he covets, signed a technology deal and steered clear of big disagreements with Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
Sept. 19, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
King Charles III invoked his forebear George III during President Trump’s state visit to Britain this week, saying his 18th-century ancestor did not “spare his words when he spoke of the revolutionary leaders” in the colonies.
Charles almost certainly spared Mr. Trump a few of his words, as likely did Prime Minister Keir Starmer. On a state visit that was more about flattering the president than forging policy breakthroughs, Charles might instead have cited George’s line to the Americans from the musical “Hamilton”: “You’ll be back.”
For Mr. Trump, Britain was an enchanting diversion from a United States convulsed in the toxic aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s shooting death. It offered an imperial-minded president a form of validation, putting him in the company of a king with whom Mr. Trump identifies, in a country with which he has ancestral ties.
Mr. Trump, of course, was on a return state visit to Britain, a privilege so singular that he joked that it better not happen again. The two days of pageantry, which unspooled from gilded carriages and marching Grenadiers to aerobatic jets and flag-draped parachutists, plainly left Mr. Trump gratified.
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What was less clear after he departed Mr. Starmer’s country residence, Chequers, for Washington on Thursday was whether this precedent-shattering display of hospitality would translate into any lasting gains for Britain.
Mr. Trump didn’t appear to soften the terms of a trade deal Britain negotiated with the United States. Nor did he promise to exert any fresh pressure on the two security issues that most concern Britain: Russia’s war on Ukraine and Israel’s grinding military campaign in Gaza. Mr. Trump said he disagreed with Mr. Starmer about recognizing a Palestinian state, but he did so without rancor.
Avoiding an ugly split and praising the president, diplomats said, have become the marks of success for a Trump visit.
“We could still get into a lot of trouble with Trump, despite having done all this,” said Kim Darroch, who served as Britain’s ambassador to Washington during Mr. Trump’s first term. “But if we don’t, I’m confident ministers will say it was worth the price. That’s just the reality of being a medium-size country on the global stage.”
Mr. Starmer played up an advanced technology partnership with the United States as the marquee business dividend of the visit. Speaking to an audience of Silicon Valley billionaires and Wall Street financiers, he vowed the deal would unlock “life-changing investments across the United Kingdom.”
Mr. Trump was more offhand. He joked that if it turned out to be a bad deal for the United States, he would blame Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who told him to sign it. He claimed not to know Peter Mandelson, Britain’s most recent ambassador to Washington, who had been instrumental in negotiating the deal on the British side, even though the two met last week in the Oval Office.
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That answer came in response to what could have been the most awkward moment of a news conference with Mr. Trump and Mr. Starmer.
The president was asked whether he had sympathy for Mr. Mandelson, whom Mr. Starmer fired last week after new revelations about the depth of his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and sex offender. Mr. Trump regularly deflects questions about his long-ago ties to Mr. Epstein, with whom he was friendly for at least 15 years, by his own account.
“I think maybe the prime minister would be better speaking of that; it was a choice that he made,” Mr. Trump said, turning to Mr. Starmer with a faint smile. “What is your answer to that?”
In a clipped tone, Mr. Starmer said he had acted after “some information came to light last week, which wasn’t available when he was appointed.”
Given the potential for worse, it was a relatively anodyne exchange. And it indicated that Mr. Trump was eager not to embarrass his host, with whom he has developed a warm relationship, despite their different politics.
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Still, Mr. Trump did little to suggest that the relationship between the United States and Britain was a two-way street. At the meeting with business leaders, he focused on the inroads he was making in the British market on behalf of American farmers. British officials failed to negotiate reductions in tariffs on steel exports or Scotch whisky, which were among their goals for the visit.
“We’re really the ones who can do tariffs,” Mr. Trump said, as Mr. Starmer looked on impassively. “No one else can do them.”
Even the technology partnership was not all it was cracked up to be, according to some critics. Nick Clegg, a former Liberal Democratic deputy prime minister who later worked as a lobbyist for the American tech giant Meta, said the deal amounted to “sloppy seconds” from Silicon Valley.
“It’s all one-way traffic,” Mr. Clegg said in a speech Wednesday to the Royal Television Society in Cambridge. “These companies need those infrastructure resources anyway. They’re building data centers all over the world. Maybe they were pushed a bit forward just to meet the timetable with this week’s state visit.”
British diplomats said that a trans-Atlantic agreement on civil nuclear technology was valuable because it would give Britain an edge in the growing market for so-called small modular reactors. As a carbon-free source of electricity for homes and factories, these compact plants could be deployed to help Britain achieve ambitious goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
On security issues, Mr. Trump made no new commitments of support to a “coalition of the willing” that Mr. Starmer and other European leaders are assembling to secure Ukraine in the event of a peace settlement with Russia. Some analysts said a breakthrough on this was unlikely during a state visit.
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Mr. Starmer and the king also both had to tolerate being bystanders in the round-the-clock drama that is Mr. Trump’s presidency. After the banquet on Wednesday, the president retired to his room in Windsor Castle, only to post on social media that the suspension of the talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, after on-air comments about the right’s reaction to the killing of Mr. Kirk, was “great news for America.”
With Mr. Starmer, a Labour prime minister, standing next to him on Thursday, Mr. Trump delivered repeated vitriolic attacks on his Democratic predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. He also suggested that Mr. Starmer consider deploying troops to stop the flow of migrants into Britain.
Mr. Starmer, like the king, did not flinch. He referred repeatedly to Mr. Trump as his friend. The flattery and cajolery are apparently worth the price, even if it draws japes in Britain, so long as it keeps Mr. Trump on the right side.
So great were the lengths to which the British went, the president could have turned George III’s smug lyrics from “Hamilton” back on his hosts.
“You’ll be back, soon, you’ll see,” he sang. “You’ll remember you belong to me.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
