UK ambassador to the USChristian Turner has said that he is confident the King and Queen will be safe throughout their stay in the United States.

He said on Sunday: “Our team has been in touch way through the night, and we'll be through the day to see whether the events of last night have any change in our operational planning.

“And I'm very confident that their Majesties will have the very best security throughout the visit.”

Robert Jobson, royal correspondent in Washington DC, reports:

The King and Queen land in Washington today. The visit was always going to be politically difficult, because Britain and the Trump administration are at odds over Iran. It was meant to be a piece of pageantry, but it is now a piece of pageantry with a security review attached.

The Palace’s quiet “minor operational adjustments” will mean changes the cameras will not pick up. A route altered here, an engagement shortened there, a window of exposure trimmed. Royal protection officers, Scotland Yard’s quietest professionals, will be embedded with the Secret Service. They will study the corridors before they study the speeches. They will know where the second exit is, and the third. That is what they do.

In July last year, Queen Camilla was made an Honorary Freeman and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, in recognition of her work for literacy. The arrangements were faultless, and the principal was protected without anyone noticing she was being protected. That is what it looks like done well. The professionals are still there, on both sides of the Atlantic... but the system around them on Saturday was not.

The King and Queen will be looked after by people who think about the room before they think about anything else. They are very good at what they do, but they should not have to be this good. Not in the capital of the oldest continuous republic in the world, and not in 2026.

A spokesperson for the Stop Trump Coalition has called the US state visit a national embarrassment, criticising the US president’s war in Iran and how it’s driving up prices in the UK.

Jake Atkinson said: “Keir Starmer sending the King to wine and dine with the warmonger-in-chief signals we are happy to green-light Trump’s illegal actions around the world, no matter how much chaos they cause.

“Ordinary people across the UK are struggling more and more with the cost of living whilst Trump’s war on Iran has driven up prices. Honouring Trump like this is a slap in the face to so many who are struggling, and suggests to the President he can continue violating international law and be rewarded with more pageantry,” he added.

The Stop Trump Coalition staged a mock state visit this morning with people in giant masks of King Charles and President Trump holding a giant prop missile with ‘COMPLICIT’ written across it.

“Being joined at the hip to Trump’s US is not just making us complicit in war crimes, but hurting the British people. From teaming up with Big Pharma to hike our medicines prices to pressuring us to drop our Digital Services Tax on the biggest tech companies, Donald Trump wants to extract as much as he can from us for the benefit of the super rich and mega-corporations in the US.

“The King’s refusal to meet with Epstein victims further reinforces that this visit is not to the benefit of anyone but Trump and the political elites. It should never have gone ahead.”

Dame Emily Thornberry, Labour chairwoman of the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, has said she is “anxious” ahead of the King’s US state visit.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I still remain anxious about this, and I don’t think I’m really alone.

“It is a really high-wire act, and the (US) president is so unpredictable, we just don’t know what he’s going to say.”

Dame Emily said that “if anybody can pull it off, it is the King”, adding he was “up for the challenge”.

But talking about “potential problems”, she said: “There are a number of things that we’re at loggerheads on here, whether it’s Nato, Ukraine, Greenland, Chagos, the Falklands, the things he’s said about our armed forces, immigration, renewables, controlling social media.”