King Charles will be spared the potential humiliation of being upbraided in public by Donald Trump this week after the White House agreed that any meeting between the two men should be held off camera.
British officials have pushed for the Oval Office meeting between the monarch and the US president to be held off camera for fear of a repeat of the scenes when Trump berated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in front of the world’s press.
Sources involved in planning the trip say Charles will pose for the cameras at the start of his centrepiece bilateral meeting on Tuesday, but will not be filmed talking about anything substantive.
Ministers have pinned great hopes on the state visit, which they are hoping will help repair the relationship between the two countries at one of its most difficult periods in decades.
With Trump threatening retaliation for criticism of the Iran war by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, the government is hoping the king might be able to talk the president down from some of his more aggressive statements.
The king will attend several other events with Trump, at which he will be accompanied by palace officials as well as the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, in line with usual practice for a state visit.
Diplomatic sources suggested that Cooper, who has previously travelled with the monarch to the Vatican, was ready to step in to deal with any awkward moments if required.
“She’s ready to leap into action as a human shield for the king should Trump start criticising Starmer or the UK more generally, as he is prone to do,” one said.
However, government insiders said the foreign secretary would be more likely to defer to Charles’s own diplomatic skills.
“He’s had decades of experience of this sort of stuff, including meeting some quite difficult characters. He reads all his papers and knows exactly what is going on. We think he’ll be just fine,” one said.
Trump has previously expressed his admiration for the royal family and is not expected to pick a public fight when Charles arrives on Monday evening.
The king is also likely to tread a fine diplomatic line, although some officials expect him to stress his commitment to the environment and to Ukraine during his speech to Congress on Tuesday. Both could be interpreted as veiled criticisms of the Trump administration, although the king is likely to couch his messages in abstract terms.
The government confirmed on Sunday that the trip would go ahead as planned, despite the weekend’s shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner in Washington DC.
Officials say the king’s security arrangements have changed slightly as a result, but the schedule remains unchanged.
Speaking to CBS News’s 60 Minutes on Sunday night, the president praised Charles for continuing with his plans. “[The king] is a great guy, and we look forward to it,” he said. “He’s really a fantastic person and a tremendous representative, and he’s brave.”