Trump state visit ‘will not take place this year’

Donald Trump’s state visit to Britain will not take place this year, it is understood.

Amid reports that the visit could take place next year, Number 10 sources said no date has been fixed, but officials are believed to be looking at a date in 2018.

Prime Minister Theresa May invited the controversial US president on a state visit to the UK shortly after he took office, but speculation that it may have been put on hold was fuelled by its absence from last month’s Queen’s Speech.

Mr Trump reportedly wants the meeting delayed until it can take place without protests, although these claims were denied.

Fresh speculation about the state visit comes after the Prime Minister and Mr Trump held talks on the margins of last week’s G20 summit in Hamburg.

After the meeting, the president said he believed Britain and the US could strike a “very powerful” post-brexit free trade deal “very, very quickly”, and hailed the “very special relationship” he had developed with Mrs May.

Outgoing Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said: “It is hugely embarrassing for the Prime Minister that even a pariah like Donald Trump no longer wants to be seen with her. He has said he will give May a trade agreement, but she is now too weak to do the deal.”