It was a remarkable performance: careful, diplomatic, occasionally pointed<\/a> and at times both charming and witty<\/a>. Perhaps we should not be that surprised. The king is a highly experienced diplomat, and while this was his first address to Congress, it was his 20th visit to Washington \u2013 as he himself noted. <\/p>\n \n But what does the undoubtedly warm American response to the king\u2019s visit mean for the future of the US-UK \u201cspecial relationship\u201d? <\/p>\n On its own, no act of royal diplomacy, however well executed, can deliver an instant reset in US-UK relations. Nor can it force an American president of any stripe \u2013 let alone the current incumbent \u2013 to change tack or alter approach. <\/p>\n On this, history offers a salutary lesson. For all the positive impact of King George VI\u2019s June 1939 visit<\/a> to the US, when war broke out just a few months later, it did not lead to instant American intervention.<\/p>\n The queen\u2019s visit in 1957<\/a> was similarly well received. But the work of rebuilding transatlantic trust \u2013 so damaged by the Suez crisis \u2013 remained ongoing in the months that followed. <\/p>\n This latest state visit will similarly offer no quick fix. But like its predecessors, it might shift the dial on the current US-UK dialogue \u2013 and perhaps help to temper the tone, at least for a while.<\/p>\n For the UK, there has already been one immediate win: Trump has decided to remove whisky tariffs<\/a> in honour of the king\u2019s visit. This will be very much welcomed by the Scottish whisky industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n The potential long-term impact of the king\u2019s visit is harder to ascertain. Not least because this will be determined by variables well beyond either his or Starmer\u2019s control: contemporary geopolitics, especially as affected by the wars in Iran and Ukraine. Despite this week\u2019s mutual exchange of praise and platitudes, the distance between London and Washington on these matters remains substantive. <\/p>\n There was a brief glimpse of these differences in two of the speeches: the king\u2019s to Congress and, on the same day, the president\u2019s at the White House.<\/p>\n The king\u2019s speech<\/a> lingered on the shared ties of history and, especially, on democratic values and ideals. It included references to the importance of compassion and interfaith dialogue, and celebrated the strength of what the king called \u201cour vibrant, diverse and free societies\u201d. <\/p>\n President Trump\u2019s speech at the White House<\/a> a few hours earlier similarly featured references to the transatlantic connections born of history. But elsewhere, his tone and intent seemed rather different. <\/p>\n Trump celebrated \u201cthe blood and noble spirit of the British\u201d \u2013 qualities which had provided American revolutionaries with a \u201cmajestic inheritance\u201d. At one point, he even declared that the patriots of the American Revolution had been animated by the \u201cAnglo-Saxon courage\u201d in their veins. This is a claim on American history that one commentator<\/a> has suggested \u201cwalks up to the edge of white nationalism\u201d. <\/p>\n There are indeed echoes here of an early 20th-century diplomatic discourse known as Anglo-Saxonism. Once popular and pervasive among transatlantic writers and diplomats<\/a> (including those of a nativist bent), it largely fell out of favour in the years between the world wars \u2013 its racial assumptions increasingly untenable. <\/p>\n As long ago as December 1918, President Woodrow Wilson explicitly told an audience<\/a> of British dignitaries \u2013 including King Charles\u2019s great-grandfather, George V \u2013 that they must not \u201cthink of us as Anglo-Saxons, for that term can no longer be rightly applied to the people of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n Wilson was the first serving US president to visit Britain, and, like Trump, had a British mother<\/a> (Trump\u2019s was from Tong on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland). Wil point \u2013 made in advance of the Paris Peace Conference \u2013 was that the US was a melting pot, not a monoculture. <\/p>\n
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\n How King Charles charmed the US while taking digs at Trump<\/a>
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\nWorlds apart<\/h2>\n
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