May-Trump meeting to test UK-US ‘special relationship’

British Prime Minister Theresa May has won the race to be the first foreign leader to meet President Donald Trump in Washington. But her trip to the U.S. capital is anything but a victory lap.

May’s staff worked feverishly to secure the two-day trip, which includes a meeting with the president this weekend at the White House. British officials hope it will help cement the U.K.’s place as a pre-eminent American ally and provide proof of what Britons — more often than Americans — call the trans-Atlantic “special relationship.”

But May faces the challenge of persuading a president who has vowed to put “America first” of the benefits of free trade with Britain and the vital role of the 28-nation NATO military alliance.

And she must build a working relationship with a populist president whose protectionist outlook and loose way with facts have alarmed many European politicians, including some of May’s own allies.

May insists she’s up to the task of being America’s steadfast but plain-speaking friend, telling British lawmakers on Wednesday that “I am not afraid to speak frankly to a president of the United States.”

Her message in the U.S. will include elements of a gentle history lesson, as she urges the two nations to “lead together.”

In a speech to Republican legislators in Philadelphia today [Macau time], May plans to say that the trans-Atlantic relationship “made the modern world” and built the institutions that have underpinned the global order since the end of World War II.

Linking Britain’s vote to leave the 28-nation European Union with the win of political outsider Trump, she’ll say that “as you renew your nation just as we renew ours, we have the opportunity — indeed the responsibility — to renew the special relationship for this new age.”

Excerpts from the speech were released in advance by May’s office.

May’s seeming embrace of Trump — in the wake of his commitment to building a Mexico border wall and other recent edicts — drew criticism from the prime minister’s opponents.

Former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband tweeted: “Today he starts on wall, praises waterboarding, bullies climate scientists. She says they can lead together. Surely decent Tories feel queasy?”

May is likely to get a warm welcome at the Republican retreat and in the White House.

Trump has already pronounced Britain “very special!” in one of his tweets. He has also has restored to the Oval Office a bust of Britain’s World War II Prime Minister Winston Churchill that was removed while Barack Obama was president, to the chagrin of some patriotically minded Britons.

May’s office says she intends to admire the bust when she visits the White House. She’ll also give Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland, a Quaich, a traditional Scottish cup of friendship.

Victoria Honeyman, a politics lecturer at the University of Leeds, said the effusive tone coming from Trump’s White House marked a change from the Obama years.

“Obama has been a more Asia-Pacific-focused president, so this is a return — at least in rhetoric — to the good old days of the U.S.-U.K. special relationship,” she said. “But it’s very difficult to know exactly what Theresa May is going to get out of this other than warm words.” AP