In the depths of her humiliation, there is at least, for Theresa May, the consolation of never again having to touch Donald Trump’s hyperactive little paw. Better than that, actually: his state visit, the mass protests, insult to London, risks to royal pussy and all, will, surely, be someone else’s problem.
For that over-hasty invitation presumably still stands, even after Trump’s insults to the mayor of London, and it seems unthinkable that Trump will pass up the chance of a Queen selfie for his man cave. Not when we know, courtesy of Gove’s extended homage, that, like a gigantic, particularly desperate bowerbird, the president has thus far had been content to ornament this retreat with trophies of piercing awfulness. A big photograph of him flashing his teeth at Balmoral would look fine next to the ageing Playboy cover and the boomerang he won for winning “comeback of the decade” at a luncheon in 1995.
In fact, it’s largely on account of his lamentable taste that a petition, issued after Trump’s Muslim ban, asked for the state visit to be cancelled. More than 1.8m people agreed his presence would embarrass the Queen. “Donald Trump’s well-documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received by Her Majesty the Queen or the Prince of Wales.” Plainly, the signatories had never looked too closely at photographs of royal interiors that reveal a shared taste for sentimental ornaments and memorabilia that augurs, like their mutual enthusiasm for thrones, uniformed servants and collections of shiny objects, extremely well for Trump-Windsor relations.
Few people on Earth, in fact, would probably feel as at home as will Trump, amid the Buckingham Palace gilt, or the Queen, when she finally experiences the lustrous Trump elevator, unforgettably described by Michael Gove. He was, he confided, “whisked up to the president-elect’s office in a lift plated with reflective golden panels and operated by an immensely dignified African American attendant kitted out in frock coat and white cotton gloves”.
As for misogyny, the briefest look at the Queen’s career confirms that the flattery of violently woman-averse old patriarchs, often accompanied by silent trophy wives and a retinue of nepotistically promoted children, is a key part of a British royal’s job description. The Duchess of Cambridge will just have to forgive the tweet in which Trump, having presumably made a close study of allegedly illegally distributed photographs, defended the Peeping Tom. “Who wouldn’t take Kate’s picture and make lots of money if she does the nude sunbathing thing. Come on Kate!”
Even the notoriously delicate Prince of Wales, who, in 2015, refused to attend a state dinner for China’s president, has not been too squeamish to socialise with a succession of Middle Eastern dignitaries of staggering vulgarity, whose horror of female empowerment is only exceeded by their virulent homophobia. While Trump can only blame his personal unspeakableness, following the London Bridge murders, for the revived campaign to exclude him, it would be understandable were he to make a self-pitying comparison with public tolerance here of, say, repeated contact between the British royal family and that of Qatar, the outcast Gulf state. How is it Qatari leaders are forgiven their vulgarity and misogyny, along with what might appear yet more embarrassing: their abuse of migrant workers and support for Islamist extremism?
While Trump is subjected to petitions, Qatari’s rulers are not merely forgiven their lighthearted approach to bonded labour deaths, their generous hospitality to the Muslim Brotherhood; the Queen actively embraced Qatari sponsorship of Royal Ascot, was delighted to accept Qatari charity for the Castle of Mey, her late mother’s holiday home.
Trump’s tweets, offensive as they were, have yet to rival, for viciousness, the rhetoric of Omar Abdelkafi, an Egyptian cleric and Qatari favourite, who has described the Charlie Hebdo massacre as “the sequel to the comedy film of 9/11”. Abdelkafi was an honoured speaker at a mosque established by Sheikha Mozah, mother of the current ruler (Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani), patron of the arts, friend of the Queen – and possibly even better known in the UK as a close friend of Cherie Blair. The Sheikha and the scouser, it emerged, have “a shared interest in disability”.
Mrs Blair reacted indignantly to the word “lobbying” to describe her efforts to reach out, on the Sheikha’s behalf, to Hillary Clinton, at around the time another important Al Thani told the FT: “We are investing everywhere. Even your Harrods – we took it.”
But few professional courtiers could have written more persuasively to beg a meeting with “my friend from Q”, and another session with the friend’s son, then crown prince, now Emir of Qatar. “She is keen,” Cherie wrote, “that he starts to build a wider international profile.” In fairness to Mrs Blair, who runs a charitable enterprise with yet another Al Thani, the diversity of the family’s social circle – from Hamas members to luminaries of the Muslim Brotherhood, from progressive lawyers to aristocratic party planners – suggests it must be all but impossible not to fall under its spell.
A 2015 feature in Vanity Fair, about an especially mesmerising Al Thani, Hamad, and his refurb of a vast palace on Park Lane, testifies to the power of iconic British landmarks in cultivating influence unachievable to less affluent visitors with a similarly indulgent line on hate speech and terror financing. In presumably unintended homage to Trollope’s Melmotte, in The Way We Live Now, the new owner of Dudley House has, with his parties and new furniture, shown the quickest way to London’s heart. “Britain’s royal family and top-drawer peers sure seem to know him,” a dazzled Vanity Fair reports, “many of them (including – in addition to the Queen – Prince Charles, the Marquess of Cholmondeley, the Duke of Devonshire, and Lord Rothschild) have come to call at Dudley House, which is staffed and run according to standards rarely seen since WWII.”
If, with his personal aversion to the Qataris, Trump still aims for acceptance by their friends, the Windsors, the route to acceptance is clear and, with his wealth, surely feasible. One: acquire a famous London department store and a swank mansion or three. Two: erect/buy a skyline-disfiguring glass prong. Three, profess an interest in at least one out of: disability, horses, old masters. There should remain only some targeted charity donation – to projects dear to royals, educators, progressive lawyers, whoever might come in handy – for the social mountaineer to find him or herself welcome everywhere.
Inasmuch as Mr Trump deserves – and I plan to join – the jeering crowds that will rush to meet him, there seems something distinctly unfair, about denying him royal access, at least until equally vulgar, misogynist and in many cases, more brutal invitees are similarly rejected. In any case, some compromise must be possible. Prince Andrew’s daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, are proficient at dressing up and curtsying, and continually said to be eager for royal work.
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