Nick Ferrari

It makes it sound almost as if it's been taken to a tailor.

Modest alterations to the security detail, and it will go ahead.

Keep calm, carry on.

That's the message from the King.

And I think you're absolutely right, your opening points.

I think Ireland rightly thinks, France rightly thinks, we rightly think we have a special relationship.

Only really seems special to either one of the two parties when they're least inclined to look at it that way.

But we need friends right now and possibly King Charles can work some magic with a rather mercurial President Trump.

Quiet lobbying, I would suggest.

Remember, the whole Mandelson affair tracks back to Sir Keir Starmer's estimation that with strange times, and one could argue a strange president in the White House, you needed people with a certain set of diplomatic skills.

So out with the usual and in with the very bizarre and somewhat risky appointment of Peter Mandelson.

We know it didn't work ultimately.

At first it did.

We got quite a preferential trade deal when compared with other nations.

But then, as you rightly referenced, when the Iran conflict started and President Trump asked to use RAF bases here and in Cyprus, there was a firm no.

So having worked that hard to keep the relationship, it was effectively blown up.

know apparently the two men do get on well.

We do know that President Trump was a huge fan of his mother, the late Queen, Queen Elizabeth II.

And in a book that apparently resides on Air Force One, some of the most devoted, some of the pictures that devote the most time in the whole book are photographs of Trump with the Queen in a previous visit.

So there seems to be a strong relationship.