Trump's Embassy Drama: 'Bizarre to Cancel Visit on Those Grounds' - Scholar

Donald Trump has canceled a planned visit to the UK in February, where he had been expected to open a new $1bn US embassy in London. Inderjeet Parmar Professor in International Politics at City University London spoke to Sputnik about Donald Trump’s comments about the new embassy.

Sputnik: What do you make of Trump's comments about the moving of the embassy?

Inderjeet Parmar: He seems to think Obama made the decision for the Embassy to be moved and actually it was done under George W Bush just before he left office and it just seems to be a very bizarre kind of thing to say as an excuse not to go there, especially one of the main embassies the US has overseas in a country of one of its main allies in the world and a member of the UN Security Council and NATO and one it alleges it has a special relationship with. So it's quite bizarre to cancel the visit on those grounds. He can make a big claim on the basis of alleged knowledge and then he can go back on it and just say he was just told by somebody that this was the case and thereby sort of refusing to accept any kind of responsibility.

READ MORE: UK Still Expects Trump's Visit Despite Criticism by London Mayor, Public

Sputnik: There is a lot of controversy between the President and London, do you think the prospect of protests could have affected his decision?

Inderjeet Parmar: I think he's used to being welcomed with full honours and a lot of pomp and ceremony and I think when he realised he wasn't going to go to Buckingham Palace and meeting with the Queen and going to Horse Guards Parade the full state visit, I think he began to get a little nervous about the visit. Therefore starting to worry about the kind of image that he would basically portray back home of him going to one their main allies.

Sputnik: What will his comments do for US/UK relations and could this affect the proposed full state visit that is yet to organized.

Inderjeet Parmar: The fact that they invest in each other more heavily than anywhere else, the fact they are both members of NATO and there Britain is integrated into that cooperation will carry on. There's cooperation on intelligence, on the counter and anti-terrorism and things like that, those things won't be affected by it. What it does do is it undermines the authority of Theresa May the Prime Minister. She gave an invitation to a very controversial President, at her first visit which was quite unusual, given the controversial character of the president and this has been a bugbear throughout. Since the General Election last year, where she lost even more authority then I think this has damaged her publicly as well. It hasn't done anything to damage the overall relationship but it has certainly damaged Prime Minister Theresa May.

The views expressed in this article by Inderjeet Parmar are solely those of the speaker and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.