US President Donald Trump hailed on Friday his strong relationship with British Prime Minister Theresa May, after having earlier scorned her Brexit strategy which he said had probably killed off hope for a future US-British trade deal.
Sitting alongside his host at the start of talks at May’s country retreat of Chequers, Trump told reporters: “The relationship is very, very strong. We really have a very good relationship.”
In an interview published just hours before he was due to have lunch with May and tea with Queen Elizabeth on Friday, Trump chided the “very unfortunate” results of the prime minister’s strategy for negotiating Britain’s departure from the European Union.
“If they do a deal like that, we would be dealing with the European Union instead of dealing with the UK, so it will probably kill the deal,” Trump told the Rupert Murdoch-owned Sun newspaper.
“I would have done it much differently,” he told The Sun, which urged its readers to back Brexit before a referendum in June 2016. “I actually told Theresa May how to do it, but she didn’t listen to me.”
Trump also heaped praise on Boris Johnson, who resigned as foreign secretary this week along with Brexit Secretary David Davis in protest at May’s strategy. Johnson, the president said, “would be a great prime minister”.
No sitting US president has ever made such biting public criticism of a British prime minister while visiting, and his comments undermined May in her party, her country and abroad.
But, as the leaders met for talks in Chequers, both tried to play down the president’s intervention into the Brexit debate.
“We really have a very good relationship,” Trump said. “Today we are talking trade and we are talking military.”
Sterling fell half a percent to a 1 1/2-week low of $1.3131, partly on Trump’s comments in the newspaper interview.
acob Rees-Mogg - a leading Conservative Brexiteer and considered a potential alternative party leader by some - said it was perfectly reasonable for Trump to make such comments, adding that May now had an opportunity to change her mind on her Brexit plan.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the president “likes and respects Prime Minister May very much,” adding that he said in the interview she “is a very good person” and that he “never said anything bad about her”.
– Tea with the queen –
Trump and May watched a display of military special forces on Friday before their formal talks which were due to include Russia, ahead of a summit in Finland on Monday between Trump and President Vladimir Putin.
Putin’s government is accused by May’s of unleashing a deadly nerve agent in the English city of Salisbury. Moscow denies the charge, but May is pressing Trump to raise the issue with Putin.
Trump will later Friday take tea with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, before spending the weekend in Scotland on a private visit that will likely take in 18 holes at one of the property magnate’s golf courses, where more protesters await him.
He will not attend any high-profile events in London, where the big demonstrations are planned, but would have heard protesters outside the ambassador’s residence where he and his wife stayed Thursday.
Melania Trump visited veterans on Friday at London’s Royal Hospital Chelsea where she also met local school children, accompanied by May’s husband Philip.
