The Queen’s class cannot be Trumped
AMERICAN bombast met royal composure yesterday.
Donald Trump flew into London on a plane which, though huge, was not quite large enough to contain his vanity for a three-day ego trip.
Some grovelled in his presence, others turned their backs.
But it was left to the Queen to show the country how to deal with the most boorish, unpredictable self-seeker ever to have occupied the White House.
Putting the US President and Her Majesty in the same room was unnerving. But there was only one winner when the king of the Kardashian Camelot came face to face with real royalty.
While Trump preened, the Queen gleamed.
Such is her professionalism we will never know whether her smile as she welcomed the President was genuine or the dutiful act of someone steeped in decades of public service.
ERRATIC
She is certainly used to dealing with unwelcome house guests.
Anyone who has had to share a carriage with Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe or sit down to dinner with Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu is perfectly capable of handling the exuberant and erratic Trump.
There was almost something pathetic about the way Trump had craved for this moment.
Perhaps he believed the pageantry of a 41-gun salute, the march past by the Grenadier Guards at Buckingham Palace and the state banquet would lend him a grandeur glaringly absent since he took office.
The one thing he will never emulate is the stoic, understated dignity of the Queen.
This was a lesson from one head of state to another, delivered with the quiet authority of an experienced schoolmistress silencing an unruly teenager.