Trump ‘beauty parade’ may favour populist right leaders over Starmer
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Diplomats have advised the UK prime minister to have a face-saving response just in case he comes low down on the list at the inauguration. Donald Trump may invite populist rightwing leaders from Europe such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán to the White House before Keir Starmer, senior UK diplomats believe.
![[Donald Trump grabs Theresa May’s hand at the White House.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5a3bb004303d8577add3cb894669ce6ca56a6883/207_432_2577_3220/master/2577.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Downing Street and the Foreign Office are eagerly pressing for the prime minister to be at the head of the traditional “beauty parade” of overseas leaders who are called to see the new president in the days after the inauguration on 20 January. Representations are being made via the UK embassy in Washington.
But senior diplomatic figures are warning that Trump may prefer to give the first visits to political soulmates on the hard right, rather than social democratic and left-of-centre Europeans, and are suggesting that Starmer and his team prepare a face-saving response just in case.
In January 2017 Theresa May was the first foreign leader to be invited to see Trump at the start of his first term. May wanted to extract a strong statement from Trump in support of Nato, and to warn him over his closeness to Vladimir Putin. But the visit became strained when Trump grabbed her by the hand as they walked through the White House, which May, it later emerged, found distinctly awkward.
