Trump, via Twitter, scraps London embassy visit
Britons don’t buy reason, which took false jab at Obama
LONDON — President Donald Trump’s cancellation of a visit to London to open a new U.S. Embassy was welcomed by his many critics in Britain on Friday, even as it deepened the diplomatic problems confronting a British government struggling to forge closer ties to Washington without offending opinion at home.
The decision averted the risk of public protests that had threatened to embarrass both Trump and Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, who has recently squirmed to distance herself from statements made by a U.S. president seen by many Britons as deeply divisive.
The announcement, which came in a Twitter post by Trump that included a false jab at former President Barack Obama, is the latest reverberation from a hasty and ill-judged invitation made around a year ago, when Trump was offered, and accepted, a state visit to Britain. Such an honor is normally bestowed only much later in a presidency.
With Britain to leave the European Union in 2019, May hopes to negotiate a new trade agreement with the United States, and the state visit was partly seen as a way of cementing ties with Trump.
But while Britons may pride themselves on their “special relationship” with the United States, that does not appear to extend to its president, whose statements on a range of topics have provoked widespread anger in the country. A petition calling for the invitation to be withdrawn was signed by more than 1.8 million people, the issue was debated in Parliament and, with large-scale protests threatened, the state visit plan was quietly put on the back burner.
Then, late Thursday night, the president took to his favorite medium, Twitter, and announced that he had scrapped his trip because he was unhappy with the new building.
His critics in Britain gave that explanation little credence. Ed Miliband, the former Labour Party leader, responded to Trump’s announcement on Twitter, saying: “Nope. It’s because nobody wanted you to come. And you got the message.”
The old U.S. Embassy, in a historic square in the exclusive Mayfair neighborhood, was deemed to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The new one, which includes a small moat, is a high-tech construction in a former rail yard on the south bank of the Thames.
Though Trump blamed the Obama administration for the move, the first announcement of the new embassy site had been made in 2008 under President George W. Bush.
In a statement released Friday the U.S. Embassy in London said that, in 2007, a plan was developed “to finance a new embassy project through a property swap for existing U.S. government property in London. This solution allowed construction of a new chancery that meets all security standards, yet used no taxpayer dollars to fund the project.”