Donald Trump’s first state visit to the UK, in June 2019, was an attempt by the British government to try to forestall the threat of Trumpism, a set of ideas and style of leadership that were not, in the end, embedded. The unprecedented second state visit of September 2025 has been an attempt to accommodate the second Trump administration – one already much more purposeful and consequential.
In one respect, the two visits are complementary: they feature an imperturbable president entreated by beleaguered prime ministers. Theresa May was humiliated publicly by Trump, and was gone the following month. Starmer has almost nothing in common with Trump except a quite unexpected, and largely inexplicable, personal chemistry.
Briefings on Air Force One, as it headed to the UK, would have been brief – the president is easily bored – and aimed at preparing him for what awaited: thousands of people in uniform choreographed to the inch to impress a mere dozen or so Americans, and one in particular.
