Could the Queen improve prospects for a trade deal with the US?

She may have met more presidents than you can shake a stick at, but what are the chances of Her Majesty charming Joe Biden on his upcoming visit?

Less than impressed: The Queen has got on well with past presidents, though with some more than others (Reuters)

It’s become something of an online parlour game, but it’s looking like the Queen may have met more US presidents than anyone else alive – with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger, who, to be fair, knew some of them rather better than most. Yet, on occasion, all the banquets and all the speeches and all the thoughtful gifts are to no avail.

Thus it transpired that, when Theresa May organised her not-quite-state visit for Donald Trump in 2018, and the 45th president shipped over most of his clan to take selfies and join in with the festivities, the desperately needed UK-US free trade still didn’t materialise. All the fine British lamb served up to President Trump on his last visit to London in December 2019 died in vain – strict US trade rules remained in place until and beyond Trump’s momentous last days in office. No last-gasp quickie trade treaty came through, and no such morsels of British lamb will melt in American mouths for the foreseeable future.

No doubt Boris Johnson is realistic enough to know that however nice Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales are to President Biden, the politicians in Brussels and Dublin will be more influential in framing whatever trade arrangement (if any) Britain is able to agree with his administration. Biden seems in any case disinclined to do Johnson any favours. And she might be Queen by the grace of god, but Elizabeth II doesn’t do miracles. More poignantly, the visit of President Biden will be her first without Prince Philip.

In all, the monarch has met 13 chief executives of the United States, and with Joe Biden’s visit to Windsor Castle on Sunday 13 June it’ll be 14 “not out”. Eleven she has met as Queen, while these gentlemen (no females, yet) were in office, with Biden making it a dozen. One she met long after he had left the White House – Herbert Hoover (1929-33), who sat next to her at a banquet during her visit to the US to meet President Eisenhower in 1957.

As Princess Elizabeth, she made friends with Harry S Truman in 1951. Had her parents, George VI and Queen Elizabeth, taken her on their well-timed goodwill visit to America in 1939, she’d also have met the longest-serving president of all time. The only president who missed the royal boat was Lyndon Johnson, who in fact made no visits to Europe during his term (1963-69), being preoccupied with the Vietnam War and America’s trans-Pacific relationships.

The Queen has danced with a president (Gerry Ford), ridden horses with one (Ronald Reagan, also knighted), joked with most of them (teasing George W Bush when he said she’d last visited Washington in 1776), but never played a round of golf with one (which Donald Trump would have liked). If the gossip is to be believed, she was especially enchanted by the Obamas, and found Jimmy Carter a touch too informal. Carter and George HW Bush were closest to her in age. Biden is 17 years her junior, and Barack Obama the only one to have been born during her reign.

As a soft weapon of diplomatic power, the Queen has few, if any, international peers; but the actual difference any of these encounters make is more debatable. Buckingham Palace and the royal family always try to put on a good show and to entertain and gently flatter their guests as best they can. They can help to create a good, friendly atmosphere, but the rest, as is only right, is up to the democratically elected politicians.

Sometimes the “special relationship” between prime minister and president is so close that the royals hardly need to add to the warm atmosphere (as with Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower, or Margaret Thatcher and Reagan). At other times, a president and prime minister might just lack that certain personal chemistry, as with Obama and both Gordon Brown and David Cameron, and then the political neutrality and “magic” of the monarchy can help ease relations.