Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Today with David McCullough on RTE Radio 1.
Just in relation to our last item, the SEAI will be in with us on Thursday to talk about all matters retrofitting and everything. So if you want to get your questions in for them on Thursday, you can send them in to todaydmc at rte.ie. Now, Britain's King Charles will be in the White House later today for the start of a three-day state visit to the United States.
There were questions about whether the trip should go ahead after a gunman attempted to storm the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, but A decision was made to continue with the planned engagements. Even apart from security, this is a high-stakes visit with relations between Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer increasingly frosty. So what can we expect?
Paul Johnson is former UK ambassador to Ireland. He joins me on the line now. Morning, Paul.
Good morning, David.
Dramatic scenes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night, which obviously led to questions about whether this visit should go ahead. But I suppose there was never really any doubt that it would continue.
I don't think there was ever any doubt. There's enough knowledge in the British system about the history of political violence and other forms of unrest in America that all of those factors would have been played into the visit planning over many weeks and months. So this is a last-minute shock, if you like, and they would have certainly reviewed all the arrangements.
And I understand that a few tweaks or modifications are being made to the programme. But I think, as you say, it's a high stakes visit and I think it would have been a very high stakes decision to cancel it at the 11th hour.
Absolutely.
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Chapter 2: What are the main concerns surrounding King Charles’ US visit?
Although perhaps there might be some who'd argue it might be a good idea. I want to get into that, Paul, because it is... A pretty strange time in relations between London and Washington. The special relationship seems to be on the skids. The Prime Minister, for reasons we might get into later, desperately needs something positive. The American president is, to put it mildly, unpredictable.
State visits don't come much more daunting than this, do they?
No, it's a very fraught backdrop for a state visit. Some of the comparisons that have been made have been to 1957, when in the wake of another Anglo-American spat over the Middle East, when President Eisenhower deplored
Britain and France's illegal invasion of the Suez Canal, the boot being on the other foot now, the Queen went to Washington the following spring in an effort to sort of mend fences and build bridges and all the rest of it.
This is a slightly different visit in the sense that President Trump invited the King and Queen to visit in the run-up to the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. So it's tied in a sense to that title. timeline.
But you're right in terms of the relationship between the British and American governments, which is obviously a different thing between the relationship between the two countries. But as the visible part of that relationship, the political atmosphere between London and Washington is as bad as I can remember in my professional lifetime.
Now, it has been reported, I was reading in The Observer yesterday, I think, that the King was furious about President Trump's comments about British military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq and, in fact, was tempted to pick up the phone and chastise him directly. The President has also denigrated Keir Starmer.
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Chapter 3: How does the recent political climate affect the state visit?
He's threatened to annex Canada, of which Charles happens to be head of state, and he insulted the Royal Navy's two aircraft carriers, which... by coincidence happen to be called HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Can all of that just be ignored or is there a way of calling the President out on some of that?
I think on the Afghanistan thing, I have no evidence for this beyond what I read in the newspapers. But if you recall, after Trump made those disgraceful comments about the European allies sort of being off the front line and not really contributing very much, I think one of the very few retractions or anything approaching an apology I can remember
was on this issue because he posted on Truth Social a few days later something about how the UK had been great allies in Afghanistan.
And I just wonder if some message was passed along some channel to say, you know, do you remember the King is, you know, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces and anything that sort of slights or insults, you know, our nation's forces gallantry is unlikely to be well received. So I think... The difficulty between the two governments on a whole range of issues is obvious.
I think what will be very fascinating to see is what the King says in his two sort of public speaking appearances, if you like. He'll say some words at the state banquet at the White House tomorrow night, and he will give a rare—I think it's only the second time a British monarch has done this— addressed to both houses of Congress also tomorrow.
Now, that speech will have been drafted for him by the government when there was the prospect of a possible visit to Ireland a few years back. I was drafting first thoughts with what he might say if he were to address the joint houses of the Oireachtas. But every word of what he finally says will have been approved by him personally. He would put a lot of work into it himself.
But he'll be really walking an extremely... narrow diplomatic wire, if you like, in that address to Congress, which of course is highly divided on partisan lines and everything he says about any issue will be poured over for any perceived criticism of the US. And I don't think there'll be any criticism of the US.
I think it will be a lot about the shared history, perhaps some self-deprecating remarks about American independence from Britain and something about the ties between the people and the great themes that unite us. But the royal family are very good at using symbolism and using moments to express their views.
So after the threats to annex Canada, I think it was not accidental that the king appeared in the uniform of the Canadian Navy, visiting a Canadian warship in London. He received a relatively junior member of the Canadian government in audience, I think at Sandringham. So he went out of his way to sort of stress that he was king of Canada and that Canada's sovereignty was...
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