The President of the United States, Donald Trump, will have lunch with the Queen and enjoy a lavish state banquet at Buckingham Palace during the course of a three-day state visit beginning on Monday.
As well as Her Majesty, two future kings and a host of senior royals will be out in force to meet the US President, but he can also expect to see protestors, the ‘baby Trump’ blimp, and 10,000 police on the streets around the country during his visit, which comes ahead of the 75th anniversary commemoration of D-Day.
A ceremonial welcome in the gardens of Buckingham Palace and a grand white-tie state banquet in the ballroom all await the American leader on Monday.
Staff will spend the next three days laying the table for Monday’s state banquet – as napkins are folded like dutch bonnets, six glasses are set out per guest and a special cushion is placed on the Prince of Wales’ chair.
Donald Trump’s state banquet has taken six months to plan and will see 170 guests sit down in Buckingham Palace’s ballroom on Monday evening. Pictured during a visit to Windsor Castle in July 2018
The President and First Lady will be given a tour of the Royal Collection to see items relating to the UK’s history with the US
The Trumps will tour Westminster Abbey, where the US president will lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior
On Tuesday Mr Trump will meet with Theresa May at St James’s Palace (left) over a business breakfast and later the President and First Lady will host a dinner at Winfield House (right) the official residence of the US ambassador in Regent’s Park
On Monday afternoon the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall will host the President and First Lady for afternoon tea at Clarence House
Donald Trump’s state banquet has taken six months to plan and will see 170 guests sit down in Buckingham Palace’s ballroom on Monday evening.
The dress code is tiaras and white tie, or national dress, and the guests, invited due to their ties with the US, will eat from priceless dinner sets.
Their plates will be placed exactly 18 inches apart – precisely measured by staff – and glasses and chairs will all be the same distance away from the table edge.
Each guest will have six glasses – for water, a champagne toast, red and white wines, dessert wine and port.
The Queen always inspects the horseshoe-shaped table herself in the afternoon before every state banquet, making her way round the room and checking the preparations with the Master of the Household, Vice-Admiral Tony Johnstone-Burt.
Surrounding the table will be 19 stations, each manned by four members of staff – a page, footman, under butler and a wine butler.
And staff will use a traffic light system and detailed diagrams to seamlessly serve the correct dietary requirements.
The Prince of Wales will have a bowl of olive oil rather than a butter pat and a cushion to help with his back pain.
Despite the palace cellar holding 25,000 bottles of wine the Government will be paying for the alcohol served during the banquet.
Speeches take place at the start at 8pm when the Queen and Mr Trump will both make a speech and propose toasts to one another, followed by the playing of the national anthems.
And the end of the banquet will be signalled by 12 pipers processing around the room – a tradition started by Queen Victoria.
Donald Trump and Melania will then join the Queen for coffee.
Members of the royal family wear sashes and badges known as orders if they have been given them in recognition of royal service.
Just before the banquet begins, members of the royal family will be lined up, usually in the White Drawing Room, to be personally introduced to Mr Trump and First Lady Melania.
Then, in the Music Room, the Queen and the American couple will be formally introduced to and shake hands with each and every guest as they file into the ballroom.
The Queen and the president will then make their way into the room side by side.
The monarch will be seated next to Mr Trump at the top end of the vast U-shaped table, along with Mrs Trump, Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.
Other royals will be spread around the table between the distinguished guests.
The Queen, who is now 93, is said to be a brisk eater and the banquets are not a lingering affair.
A string orchestra usually provides the musical backdrop.
The dress code is tiaras and white tie and the guests, invited due to their ties with the US, will eat from priceless dinner sets. Pictured, Donald Trump with Japanese Emperor Naruhito during a state banquet at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Monday, May 27
The Queen and former US President Barack Obama during a State Banquet at Buckingham Palace on May 24, 2011. Despite the palace cellar holding 25,000 bottles of wine the Government will be paying for the alcohol served during the banquet
The monarch will be seated next to Mr Trump at the top end of the vast U-shaped table, along with Mrs Trump, Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall. Pictured, former US President Gerald Ford and the Queen dance at a state dinner in Washington in 1976
The Queen is officially welcoming Mr Trump and First Lady Melania Trump to the UK, holding a private lunch at the palace, taking them on a tour of Royal Collection items in the Picture Gallery and then honouring the president with a lavish banquet.
She will exchange gifts with the Trumps, and in the evening deliver a speech and propose a toast to the president at the banquet, as is the custom. The monarch has already met the US leader – he joined her for tea at Windsor Castle last July.
As they inspected a Guard of Honour, the president walked along before standing still in front of the Queen, meaning she had to navigate her way around him so they could walk side by side.
He later said of the sovereign in an interview: ‘That is a beautiful woman.’
The Queen – the nation’s longest-reigning head of state – is an expert at diplomacy, having entertained all manner of controversial leaders over the decades from Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
The President will also meet the Queen’s sons and grandsons.
The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall will join the Queen in officially welcoming the president, having not met him during last year’s visit.
Charles will inspect the Guard of Honour with Mr Trump – a role that used to fall to the Duke of Edinburgh before his retirement.
Charles and Camilla will also attend Monday’s private lunch, have afternoon tea with President and Mrs Trump at Clarence House, and be at the banquet in the evening.
William, who is second in line to the throne and also a future monarch, and Kate will also be guests at the banquet.
The Duke of Cambridge may choose not bring up the President’s previous comment in a radio interview that he would have slept with Diana, Princess of Wales, without hesitation.
Mr Trump also made remarks about the Duchess of Cambridge after she was photographed sunbathing topless by the paparazzi in France.
‘Kate Middleton is great – but she shouldn’t be sunbathing in the nude – only herself to blame,’ he wrote on Twitter.
During Barack Obama’s 2011 visit, newlyweds William and Kate did not attend the evening celebrations, but had a special audience with the then-president and first lady Michelle Obama in the afternoon and forged a strong bond with the couple.
William’s brother Harry, who has a strong connection with the US through his American wife, Meghan, will be at the private lunch in the palace, but the duchess, who is on maternity leave, will be at home with their four-week-old son, Archie.
The Duke of Sussex has already met Mrs Trump while in Canada for the Invictus Games in 2017.
And Prince Andrew, the Queen’s second-oldest son, will accompany the Trumps to Westminster Abbey, where the US president will lay a wreath at the Grave of the Unknown Warrior and take a tour of the Abbey.
He will also be at the breakfast meeting between Mr Trump, Prime Minister Theresa May and business leaders on Tuesday morning. The duke shares a love of golf with the American leader, who is a huge fan of the sport and owns golf resorts in Scotland.
Meanwhile other Britons will have a cooler reception for the American President.
The team behind a huge Donald Trump baby blimp is ‘confident’ of being granted permission to fly the effigy again during the upcoming visit, which will require 10,000 police officers deployed on Britain’s streets.
The phone-wielding, nappy-wearing inflatable could return to London on Tuesday – alongside a new effigy of Trump sitting on a gold toilet – as thousands plan to march in protest against the visit.
A huge police and security operation will be in place, with the Metropolitan Police saying it had ‘a very experienced command team’ leading the operation as the force geared up to deal with the visit itself and expected protests.
Last year, almost 10,000 officers were deployed for Mr Trump’s trip to the UK, with nearly every force in the country providing staff to support the operation.
During the state visit, which begins on June 3, protesters are again hoping to fly the Donald Trump blimp, which depicts the American leader as a baby.
A 16ft talking robot of Mr Trump sitting on a gold toilet is also expected to make an appearance.
The 6m tall baby blimp of Donald Trump was flown as a protest against his visit last year
Today workers in cherry pickers installed Union Jack flags along the length of the Mall in preparation for the visit.
President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are escorted by Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako prior to their meeting at the Japanese Imperial Palace this week
Today workers in cherry pickers installed Union Jack flags along the length of the Mall in preparation for the visit.
The blimp made its first appearance in July last year during his previous working visit, which also sparked mass protests.
Organisers have applied for permission to fly the blimp at Parliament Square on Tuesday and the Greater London Authority has confirmed it is reviewing the request.
It is understood the decision will be made jointly with the Metropolitan Police.
But the blimp, part of the Stop Trump coalition group, will only be unleashed if a fundraising page for charities ‘pushing back against the politics of hate and division’ hits £30,000.
At lunch time on Thursday, 532 people had donated a total of £16,695.
Organiser Kevin Smith said: ‘We will only fly the baby if we hit the target.
‘I don’t think it’s a done deal but we will definitely be pushing it over the coming days.’
Mr Trump’s schedule for Tuesday includes a business breakfast at St James’s Palace with Mrs May and senior business leaders from the US and UK.
He will then visit Downing Street, before hosting a dinner at the residence of the US ambassador when he will be joined by the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall.
A giant robot of Donald Trump sitting on a gold toilet is on its way to the UK after being shipped from China for protests against the US president’s state visit
Throughout Mr Trump’s visit he will be accompanied by a motorcade and the official helicopter, Marine One, the U.S. embassy said (pictured, the President boards the helicopter in Washington last year)
Mr Smith added: ‘We’re in the process of applying for permission at the moment and that’s a mixture of talking to the police and the Greater London Authority, and we’re applying for essentially the same permit as what we had last time.’
The blimp is currently stored in a ‘suitcase in Kentish Town’ and organisers are ‘presuming’ permission will be given, Mr Smith said.
A spokesman for the Greater London Authority said a decision will be made in ‘due course’.
Meanwhile, Facebook event pages promoting separate protest marches have drawn interest from tens of thousands of people.
The listing for one event, co-ordinated by 16 groups and individuals including Momentum and the Stop the War Coalition, said: ‘Donald Trump is coming to Britain for a state visit. Let’s show him what we think of his divisive, hateful policies.’
The event, which has 7,400 people listed as attending and a further 33,000 as interested, says the march will begin in Trafalgar Square at 11am on Tuesday to ‘declare a Trump-free zone’ before ‘marching to wherever he is’.
The event description says: ‘We will be taking to the streets opposing Trump’s racism, themed areas will feature throughout the protest with climate justice, migrants’ rights, anti-racism, women’s rights, LGBT rights, anti-war and trade union rights, and many more.’
Regional demonstrations across the UK are also planned, including in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Belfast.
Mr Trump’s visit last year drew tens of thousands of demonstrators to the streets and roughly 10,000 police officers were deployed.
This year’s protest props will also include a 16ft talking robot of Mr Trump sitting on a gold toilet.
Amnesty International, the human rights organisation, has said it will unfurl five giant banners at Vauxhall Bridge, facing the US embassy, on Monday morning.
The 20-metre-long banners will spread a ‘resist message’ and will say ‘Resist sexism’, ‘Resist racism’, ‘Resist hate’, ‘Resist cruelty’ and ‘Resist Trump’, the group said.
In July 2018 the ‘Baby Trump# balloon hovered over Parliament Square and the Stop Trump Coalition is planning to stage a similar aerial demonstration when he arrives in June
Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK section’s director, said: ‘Trump has presided over two-and-a-half years of utterly shameful policies.
‘Locking up child migrants, imposing a discriminatory travel ban, decimating global funding for women’s rights and withdrawing from global human rights bodies – it’s been a roll call of shame under Donald Trump’s presidency.
‘We need to resist Trump’s trashing of human rights.
‘Within the Anglo-American relationship, we’d like to see the UK Government being far more vocal about human rights.
‘Our fear is that the Government’s desperate hunger for post-Brexit trade deals with the USA could mean we end up giving a free pass to the White House as this onslaught against human rights continues.’
It depicts the American leader with his trousers round his ankles while tweeting and says some of his well-known phrases such as ‘stable genius’ and ‘no collusion’, as well as breaking wind.
The Met said officers have met organisers of the Together Against Trump protest, who plan to gather in Trafalgar Square on June 4.
The force is in discussions to agree a route with the demonstrators, who wish to pass down Whitehall.
A section of the road will be closed off as part of the security operation around the president’s visit.
At the Tower of London, which gets 62 guns in a royal anniversary salute, the Honourable Artillery Company (file photo, firing at the Tower in 2018) will perform the ceremony with L118 Ceremonial Light Guns similar to those used in Afghanistan
Trump, pictured in Washington this week, declared he could meet his ‘friends’ Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage during his state visit to the UK next week
A Metropolitan Police spokeswoman said: ‘A very experienced command team is preparing the multi-faceted policing and security operation for the president’s visit and whilst the Met has a responsibility to ensure the right to lawful protest this needs to be balanced with the complex requirements of this policing plan.’
Security has also been tightened for the UK’s national commemorations of the 75th D-Day anniversary, which will be attended by international figures including the Queen and Mr Trump.
Members of the public will be prevented from watching the event, with a double-layered solid fence to be erected around Southsea Common in Portsmouth, Hampshire.
The Met has already staged a major policing operation around protests this year, with more than 10,000 officers deployed to deal with the Extinction Rebellion demonstrations that dominated parts of central London.
Police forces in the UK have experienced a drop of nearly 20,000 officers since 2010 and concerns over resources have come into sharp focus amid a recent surge in violent crime.
When Mr Trump’s state visit was announced earlier this year, Simon Kempton from the Police Federation warned officers were already ‘run ragged’ with extra work. The 2018 Trump visit racked up an estimated bill of £18 million.
The ups and downs of the Special Relationship during the May/Trump years
The President and Prime Minister walked hand in hand along the Colonnade of the West Wing in January 2017
Donald Trump’s state visit will mark the latest chapter in the US president’s turbulent relationship with the UK during the Premiership of Theresa May. Here are some of the key events:
January 2017: Theresa May becomes the first foreign leader to meet the president for talks just a week after his inauguration and they are pictured in Washington holding hands as they walked.
In a joint press conference at the White House, the pair hail the US-UK ‘special relationship’ and Mrs May says Mr Trump has accepted an invitation from the Queen for the president to make a state visit to Britain later that year.
May 2017: A row erupts between the US and British authorities after sensitive information was leaked to American news outlets in the wake of the Manchester Arena terror attack.
Two days later, Mrs May says Mr Trump has made it clear the leaks were ‘unacceptable’.
June 2017: The Prime Minister condemns Mr Trump’s Twitter attacks on London Mayor Sadiq Khan after the London Bridge atrocity. Mr Trump had mocked Mr Khan for saying there was ‘no reason to be alarmed’ over armed police on the streets of the capital.
September 2017: Mrs May delivers a rebuke to the US president after he claimed the Parsons Green Tube bomber was ‘in the sights’ of Scotland Yard. The Prime Minister said: ‘I never think it’s helpful for anybody to speculate on what is an ongoing investigation.’
November 2017: Downing Street and the White House fall out after the president shared an anti-Muslim videos posted online by far-right group Britain First.
In response to a Downing Street rebuke, Mr Trump told the Prime Minister ‘don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive radical Islamic terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom’.
December 2017: American ambassador Woody Johnson expresses his desire to have the US president at the opening of the country’s new embassy on London’s South Bank in January.
Mrs May rebuked the President after he shared this video from a Britain First extremist. He replied she should ‘focus on the destructive radical Islamic terrorism … in the United Kingdom’
January 2018: The US president says he has cancelled plans to travel to the UK to open the embassy, and hit out at the location of the project.
February 2018: Mr Trump uses the NHS as an example of why universal healthcare should not reach US shores, claiming it was ‘going broke and not working’.
March 2018: The response from Mr Trump is initially ambiguous after Russia is blamed for the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury but the White House later states it ‘stands in solidarity’ with the UK and joins Western allies in expelling diplomats.
May 2018: Mr Trump, defending US gun laws, claimed a London hospital was ‘like a war zone’ because of the rate of stabbings in the capital. ‘They don’t have guns, they have knives,’ he said.
July 2018: The president arrives in the UK for a working visit and immediately lobs a political hand grenade at Mrs May by criticising her approach to Brexit negotiations and lavishing praise on Boris Johnson – saying he would be a ‘great prime minister’ – just days after the Leave campaigner walked out of her Cabinet.
Mr Trump sought to repair the damage after talks at Chequers, saying the ‘incredible’ Prime Minister and was ‘doing a fantastic job’.
Mrs May later revealed Mr Trump’s advice on negotiating Brexit was to ‘sue the EU’.
During the visit, Mr Trump was again spotted holding the Prime Minister’s hand as they attended a banquet at Blenheim Palace.
November 2018: Mr Trump says the draft Withdrawal Agreement reached by the UK and EU setting out the terms for Brexit damaged the chances of a UK-US trade deal.
President Trump praised Boris Johnson – then newly resigned from Theresa May’s Cabinet – on the even of his 2018 state visit. Pictured: the two men at the UN in 2017
March 2019: The president said he was surprised how badly Brexit has been handled and warned that another referendum would be ‘unfair’.
Speaking during a visit to the White House by Irish premier Leo Varadkar, Mr Trump said ‘I’m not sure anybody knows’ what was happening with Brexit.
May 2019: The president said Mrs May was ‘a good woman, she worked hard’ after the Prime Minister was forced to set out the timetable for her exit from Number 10.
But Mr Trump also suggested he would use his forthcoming visit to the UK to raise allegations that GCHQ was involved in spying on his presidential campaign – something the intelligence agency has dismissed as ‘nonsense’ and ‘utterly ridiculous’.
Just days before the visit Mr Trump praised Nigel Farage – whose Brexit Party helped inflict an electoral humiliation on Mrs May’s Tories earlier in the same week – and Boris Johnson, frontrunner in the race to replace the Prime Minister.
‘They are two very good guys, very interesting people,’ he said, describing both men as his ‘friends’.
Travelling with Mr Trump will be a fleet of armoured vehicles and a small army of security personnel designed to create an impenetrable shield around the US head of state.