King Charles says the bond between the US and UK is 'unbreakable'

0:00Well, they were two historic speeches 35 years apart. Some people believe that power grows from the barrel of a gun, so it can, but history shows that it never grows well nor for very long. Force in the end is sterile. It was the late Queen Elizabeth II addressing U.S. Congress in 1991, and overnight her son, King Charles, followed in his mother's footsteps, telling the joint session of Congress that the bond between the U.S. and the UK is irreplaceable. We are still in the season of Easter. It is where I believe, with all my heart, that the essence of our two nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace and to value all people of all faiths and of none.

1:00King Charles also told Congress that the Orcas Agreement will keep the citizens of Australia, the UK and the U.S. safer for generations to come. John Rental is a chief political commentator at the Independent in London and joins me now. John, good to have you back on the programme. Hi there. How did you make of this King's speech? Very clever. All sorts of little coded comments that gently put Donald Trump back in his box, I think. In particular, he talked about how, in the response to 9-11, Britain stood shoulder to shoulder with America, he was quoting Tony Blair, our Prime Minister then, which was unusual for a monarch to do, I think, but very much drawing attention to the fact that we were there for the Americans when they needed us in direct contradiction to Donald Trump

2:04complaining that we weren't there when he went to war with Iran. So multi-faceted relationship between the palace and the government. What do we know about how speeches like this are written and the view that the government may have on what needs to happen, what would be helpful? Well, we don't know very much about what goes on behind the scenes, but there are some clever people working in Buckingham Palace, some of the finest civil servants do stints working for the royal family. And of course, the King does talk to the Prime Minister and his private secretary will be talking to the Prime Minister's office and I'm sure there will be consultations. So if there were comments that were aimed at putting the record straight after some of Donald Trump's insults of the UK, I'm sure in a case, Darma would have been consulted

3:09about them. What do we know about the personal relationship between King Charles and President Trump? Well, it's very good on President Trump's side. I mean, we know that because President Trump doesn't stop talking about how much he loves the royal family and in particular, Charles and William. And he was very fond of Queen Elizabeth too, but we don't know how much that's reciprocated and we assume that the royal family do their duty, whatever they think of Donald Trump. So there are a number of political issues which are in the backdrop as this visit takes place, including President Trump's criticism of Sir Keir Starmer, repeated criticism, the Epstein matter and also related as well, the appointment of Lord Peter Mandelson as

4:09the UK ambassador to the U.S. challenging is the relationship right now, do you think, John? Well, it's not going very well and that's why I think Keir Starmer was quite keen that this trip should go ahead despite a lot of voices in the UK suggesting that it should be cancelled. Because I think Keir Starmer can always rely on the royal family to be deployed in the British national interest knowing that Donald Trump is not going to turn on them. Unlike the way he turned on Keir Starmer who used to be Donald Trump used to be very polite about and used to be very warm towards and has only recently started being rude about in public. John Rental, it's good to have you back on breakfast this morning. Thank you so much. That's my pleasure.