Trump to meet Queen Elizabeth despite chorus of discontent

New nerve agent case probed

LONDON, July 5, (Agencies): When Donald Trump meets Queen Elizabeth next week, he will become the 12th US President that the monarch has met during her 66 years on the throne, the longest in British history.

Apart from Lyndon Johnson, Elizabeth has met every US leader since Harry S. Truman but no other US presidential encounter has generated the same level of opposition and controversy in Britain as Trump’s trip.

Prime Minister Theresa May offered Trump a state visit — a pompladen affair usually featuring an open-top carriage trip through central London and a banquet at Buckingham Palace — when she became the first foreign leader to visit him after his inauguration in January 2017.

Only two US presidents — Barack Obama and George W. Bush — have previously been invited for full state visits. Trump will get a less lavish one than originally offered, but he will still meet Elizabeth and many British lawmakers have voiced objection to his coming at all. Trump’s travel ban targeting several Muslim-majority countries and his re-tweeting of a message posted by the deputy leader of the far-right Britain First party, who has since been jailed for religiously aggravated harassment, both led to widespread condemnation in the country.

Most recently, the separation of migrant children and parents at the US-Mexico border reignited calls for May to call off Trump’s visit.

“President Trump has locked up 2,000 little children in cages and is refusing to release them unless he is allowed to build a wall,” opposition Labour lawmaker Gavin Shuker said to May in parliament last month.

Queen Elizabeth

Praised

“He has quit the United Nations Human Rights Council; he has praised (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un’s treatment of his own people; and he has turned away Muslims. What does this man have to do to have the invitation that the prime minister has extended revoked?” After he was invited last year, more than 1.86 million people signed a petition saying Trump should not be given a state visit because it could embarrass the queen.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister May will propose on Friday a new plan to ease trade and offer Britain more freedom to set tariffs after Brexit, a lastditch attempt to unite her divided government on plans to leave the European Union.

Her Downing Street office said May will unveil the plan — the “facilitated customs arrangement” — to her team of ministers at her country residence Chequers, trying to secure an agreement to push on with all-but-stalled Brexit talks. May is under increasing pressure from EU officials, companies and some lawmakers to move forward with negotiations to leave the EU, a departure that will mark Britain’s biggest trading and foreign policy shift in almost half a century.

The new plan will see Britain closely mirror EU rules, use technology to determine where goods will end up and therefore which tariffs should be applied, and hand Britain the freedom to set its own tariffs on goods.

Aides suggest it “offers the best of both worlds”.

But Friday’s crunch meeting will not be plain sailing. Her Brexit minister, David Davis, has sent a letter to May to describe the plan as “unworkable”, a source close to him said, and supporters of Britain leaving the EU fear being kept in the EU’s customs sphere — something they see as a betrayal.

In another development, church services, tea parties and even a medically themed symphony are on the agenda as Britain marks the 70th anniversary of the National Health Service — a battered but beloved institution facing an uncertain future.

Public buildings were being flooded in medical blue Thursday and prayers were being said at Westminster Abbey to celebrate the state-funded service, launched on July 5, 1948, in a country shattered by war.

Support

The NHS principle of free medical treatment, funded by taxation, retains wide support. But it has been challenged by rising life expectancy, increasing patient expectations and the vagaries of government funding.

After a spike in ambulance delays and canceled operations this winter, Prime Minister Theresa May last month announced the service would receive 20.5 billion pounds ($27 billion) in extra funding by 2023-24.

Meanwhile, British police scrambled on Thursday to determine how a couple were exposed to the same nerve agent used on a former Russian spy earlier this year, as fear spread in the normally quiet English region where both cases took place.

The couple were taken ill on Saturday in the small town of Amesbury, close to the city of Salisbury, where former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found slumped on a bench on March 4 in an incident that sparked a diplomatic crisis with Russia.

“The possibility that these two investigations might be linked is clearly a line of enquiry for us,” said Neil Basu, head of Britain’s counter-terrorism police force. British security minister Ben Wallace told BBC radio: “The working assumption would be that these are victims of either the consequences of the previous attack, or something else, but not that they were directly targeted”.

Police announced late Wednesday that tests on the couple, named locally as 44-year-old woman Dawn Sturgess and 45-year-old man Charlie Rowley, revealed they had been exposed to Novichok, but could not say whether it was the same batch used on the Skripals. Novichok is a military-grade nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Wallace repeated the British government’s accusations of Russian responsibility for the attack on the Skripals, which have been denied by Moscow, and said Russia could provide information that would protect local residents in Salisbury.

“We have said they can come and tell us what happened. I’m waiting for the phone call from the Russian state. The offer is there. They are the ones who could fill in all the clues to keep people safe,” he said.