No UK prime minister, or indeed any other world leader, has ever been to the inauguration of a US president since the record of attenders began in 1874. It is more likely ignorance than iconoclasm that has led Donald Trump to invite a bunch of leaders anyway.
In other words, Keir Starmer shouldn’t sweat it that he’s not on the invite list. Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Narendra Modi both are, but are not expected to attend: in the first case because he’s busy; in the second, who knows? Trump’s and Modi’s politics aren’t wildly dissimilar, but I can see Modi thinking: “Dude, you’re coming off like an incredibly inexperienced PR person, trying to pack a party by sticking Hello! magazine on a dart board and just seeing where the arrows land.”
President Xi Jinping was invited but can’t attend; former Brazil president Jair Bolsonaro has lost his passport – sorry, had his passport seized by authorities investigating him for an alleged coup; Benjamin Netanyahu declined for reasons unrelated to the international criminal court’s warrant for his arrest – the US resiled from the ruling.
Impossible to say, then, whether this is a hot ticket or not. There are a hell of a lot of people with priors – and I mean engagements, not convictions, though in some cases the two converge. If you’re worried that the UK is underrepresented, don’t be: Liz Truss arrived with some days in hand, wearing a Maga hat. She was upstaged on Sunday, however, by the arrival of Suella Braverman, not because she’s more colourful – not even her Maga hat was as colourful – just because Truss’s stock is weirdness, and Braverman was much more weird.
Braverman arrived mangling her words, “I’m very much looking much forward to the inauguration” and walking alongside Laurence Fox, surely a catastrophe whether it was by accident or design. She said she was grateful for the invitation, but couldn’t confirm that she’d been invited. As a nation, we have sent the very worst of British public life to this event; and, fine, they went of their own accord, but it still sends a neat message.
• Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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