Theresa May prepares to meet President Trump

Theresa May has laid a wreath at Arlington Military Cemetery and then gone off for more prepping ahead of one of the most challenging meetings a UK leader has had to navigate.

Mrs May has won the prize of being first through the door. Will she by this evening be wishing she’d never pushed for that?

I imagine that even if the UK hadn’t voted to leave the EU and David Cameron was PM, he would be hoping to be first through the door. It would be awkward and he might well not have got the invitation. In Trump circles he was seen as far too chummy with President Obama. But the imperative to want to nail down the NATO Article 5 commitment and the structures of post-war international relations would’ve been intense.

Mr Cameron, if he’d got through the door, might have repeated the traditional line about hoping the UK would be a ‘bridge to Europe’ – not an obvious crowd pleaser with Team Trump that, it’ll be interesting to see whether Theresa May uses the line. No sign of it when she addressed Republican congress members in Philadelphia.

There, Mrs May spoke instead of the US and the UK leading the world. But as this piece argues in the Washington Post today, does the world want to be led by these two? And where would they lead the world?  Mrs May in Philadelphia rubbished the post 9/11 military actions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. What is the international project she sees for the US and the UK?

In an interview for Fox broadcast last night, you see President Trump showing their reporter around the Oval Office. ‘I have great phones. I have phones that, let me tell you, the technology we have in this country is incredible.’ We may see a glimpse of the small talk Mrs May can look forward to in a few hours’ time as President Trump explains how he’s had the presidential portraits re-hung and has kept the Martin Luther King bust. It’s like an episode of ‘Through the Keyhole.’ He talks about the long letter he received from President Obama, the carpets, how awful the media are. Mrs May will be hoping that her meeting is a bit more structured so the two can at least touch on all the topics she wants to connect on. She’ll be hoping for some clarity but her team all know you don’t always get that.

One US network this morning announced that Theresa May was in town because the UK, after leaving the EU, ‘needs a trade deal’. She’ll be desperate to avoid a ‘needy’ look to all this. Plenty of European allies will see this visit in that light. Getting the tone right in the press conference will be a big challenge – she wants to make a thin-skinned novice feel like she’s a good ally but doesn’t want to look like a patsy. Her cool demeanour and minimal emoting may help her here. The press conference is supposed to start at 6pm.

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