The first time Donald Trump was on an official visit to the UK, in July 2018, he was deep in conversation with Theresa May during the state banquet at Blenheim Palace when his interview with the Sun dropped, offering a range of unwelcome thoughts about the then prime minister and her handling of Brexit. May’s communications team decided to let her enjoy the meal before dealing with the fallout.

When the President lands in Britain next week for another two-day jamboree of pomp and politics, Keir Starmer’s aides know what to expect. ‘The one thing about Trump which is entirely predictable is his unpredictability,’ one ventures.

The potential landmines lie in plain sight this time – including a possible interview with GB News’s Beverley Turner. Six of Trump’s cabinet recently attended the US launch of the channel’s Washington bureau. ‘He likes GB News,’ a British Trump whisperer explains. ‘But he loves Bev Turner…’ As a Downing Street official observes: ‘He could say literally anything to GB News.’

When Turner last interviewed Trump, she pressed him to criticise growing limits to freedom of speech in the UK, an issue which is also close to the heart of J.D. Vance, the Vice-President. Starmer’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state soon after Trump’s visit, the war in Ukraine and the conflict in Gaza are all areas where Downing Street and the White House are not quite on the same page.

Yet the striking thing is that British officials involved in the preparations for the visit seem sanguine about what will follow. They believe the substance and upside will far outweigh passing media squalls. They think the public is now used to Trump’s off-piste verbal excursions, which they say are ‘known unknowns’. Those who want Trump to join their attacks du jour on the government may be disappointed.

More fundamental to Trump than ideology is his abiding love of the deal. Recent British visitors to the White House noted with approval that on the wall of the staircase between the ground and first floors of the West Wing there now hangs a picture of Trump at the G7 summit, with Starmer peering over his shoulder, as he signed the executive order which implemented the recent trade deal with Britain. When Turner asked Trump about freedom of speech during his recent visit to Scotland, the President agreed it was an important issue but added: ‘I like your Prime Minister… He is a good man who got a trade deal done… It is a good deal.’

It is not the first time the online right has been disappointed by Trump’s pragmatism and periodic politeness. Claims that he would block the Chagos Islands deal and Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador in Washington were both wrong. Vance’s holiday in the Cotswolds passed........

© The Spectator