LONDON: Theresa May will shrug off concerns about Donald Trump’s presidency and pledge to rekindle the special relationship as she begins a two-day charm offensive that will see her become the first world leader to meet the new US president.

Members of Parliament, including some in May’s own party, have expressed anxiety about Trump’s stance on a range of issues, including protectionism and torture. Global trade experts have warned that Britain may gain little from a bilateral trade deal with Washington.

But the prime minister will deliver a warm message about the two countries working closely together when she addresses senior Republicans at the party’s annual retreat in Philadelphia on Thursday, before she meets Trump in the White House for face-to-face talks on Friday.

May will tell Republicans: “The United Kingdom is by instinct and history a great, global nation that recognises its responsibilities to the world. And as we end our membership of the European Union — as the British people voted with determination and quiet resolve to do last year — we have the opportunity to reassert our belief in a confident, sovereign and global Britain, ready to build relationships with old friends and new allies alike.

“So as we rediscover our confidence together — 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. We have the opportunity to lead, together, again.”

May’s arrival comes as Trump signs off a volley of executive orders in a very public show of swiftly undoing the work of the Obama administration and beginning to honour pledges made on the campaign trail.

On Wednesday, Trump signed two executive orders to boost border security and crack down on immigrants living in the US illegally. On Tuesday, he angered Native Americans and climate change activists by signing executive orders to allow construction of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL oil pipelines. And on Monday, he reinstated the “global gag rule”, which bans aid funding for groups that offer abortions or abortion advocacy even if they use their own funds to do so.

May was pipped to a meeting with Trump by her Tory leadership rival Michael Gove, now a backbench MP, who interviewed the new president earlier this month. Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who spoke at a Trump rally during the election campaign, has also met him, and the president even went so far as to suggest him as a potential ambassador to Washington.

Downing Street knows that many British voters are sceptical about Trump and his populist policies, some of which he has already taken steps to put into action. Thousands of people joined Women’s Marches in cities across Britain last weekend to protest against his stance on women’s rights.

But May has judged there is more to be gained by striking up what Downing Street sources called a “grown up” relationship with the new president than by remaining aloof.

Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, accused the prime minister of “threatening European partners while offering a blank cheque to President Trump”, while the SNP’s Angus Robertson pressed her on whether she was willing to downgrade Britain’s food standards to win a trade deal.

Andrew Tyrie, a senior Tory MP, also underlined the degree of concern in May’s party about Trump. At prime minister’s questions, he said: “President Trump has repeatedly said he will bring back torture as an instrument of policy. When she sees him on Friday, will the prime minister make it clear that in no circumstances will she permit Britain to be dragged into facilitating that torture, as we were after 11 September?”

A spokeswoman for the prime minister later said: “We don’t condone torture, inhumane or degrading treatment in any form. That is very clearly the UK’s position. There are going to be issues where we differ on approach and view with President Trump. The benefits of a close, effective relationship is we will be able to raise these directly and frankly with the president.”

May also hopes that by establishing a close relationship, she can persuade Trump to stick to his pledge of pursuing a bilateral trade deal with the UK that could be put into effect after Brexit.

But trade experts are sceptical that a deal can be negotiated quickly — and warn that the US may take advantage of its superior bargaining position as a much larger economy to force open Britain’s markets to US firms.

Adam Posen, a former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee who is now president of the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington, said: “It would require an enormous, transformative relationship with the US to make up for the decline in trade with the EU.

“For 70 years, since the Second World War, the US, beyond very narrow intelligence-sharing, has always treated the UK as subservient, or wanted it to be subservient.”

He added: “There’s a lot of reasons to think there will be very small upsides; I can say with very great confidence any gains made from such [a deal] will be a small fraction of what they’ll lose.”

First encounters

Gordon Brown and Barack Obama

March 3, 2009

The election of Barack Obama came at the tail end of the Labour government. Embroiled in both economic and political crisis, Gordon Brown spotted President Obama’s election as an opportunity to be touched by the gold dust of the newly elected president. In March 2009, Downing Street proudly boasted that Brown was the first European leader President Obama had met. The first meeting was dominated by the global financial crisis and the upcoming G20 summit in London.

However, there was some embarrassment when President Obama gifted a box of US films to Brown — on DVDs that did not work on UK players.

Tony Blair and George W. Bush

February 23, 2001

Tony Blair and George W. Bush’s first summit came at a snowy Camp David — the US president’s official retreat — seven months before the 9/11 attacks that would come to define their relationship. The two leaders would eventually form a tight bond, with both countries going to war in Iraq despite the opposition of some European allies. But the Camp David summit is remembered for something rather more trivial. Upon being asked what the two leaders had in common, President Bush replied: “Well, we both use Colgate toothpaste.”

John Major and Bill Clinton

February 24, 1993

The first encounter between John Major and Bill Clinton was just a month after the president’s inauguration. There was a certain degree of nervousness before the meeting. Major had been a ferocious backer of George H.W. Bush in the 1992 presidential election. And between 1993 and 1997, the relationship between Major and Clinton never really blossomed. They fell out over the US issuing a visa to Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and the brewing conflict in the Balkans.

Margaret Thatcher and George H.W. Bush

November 7, 1988

Margaret Thatcher and president-elect George H.W. Bush’s first official visit took place during her state visit to Washington DC in November 1988. The state visit was planned before the election to say goodbye to her ally Ronald Reagan, and the BBC report at the time wondered whether her relationship with President Bush could be “as special”. She spent some time with the incoming president to discuss the end of the Cold War and the tensions in the Gulf. A year after she left Downing Street, President Bush invited Thatcher back to the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan

February 25, 1981

When Margaret Thatcher met President Reagan just a month into his presidency, they weren’t strangers — their first meeting took place in 1975, when he was the former governor of California and she was leader of the UK opposition. In 1981, the British economy was entering its sixth quarter of recession, and her government seemed on course for electoral defeat. At her lowest point, no one placed themselves by her side as much as the incoming president of the United States, who made her his administration’s first state visitor and treated her with a warm welcome, in stark contrast to the frugality of his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. They became political soul mates and good friends.

“Your problems,” said the British prime minister, “will be our problems, and when you look for friends, we shall be there.”

James Callaghan and Jimmy Carter

March 10, 1977

James Callaghan’s arrival in Washington — on Concorde — came amid an ongoing siege nearby, which led to the cancellation of the traditional 19-gun salute in case it alarmed the gunman. But there was still a very relaxed feeling about the ceremony. Carter hailed the special relationship between the two nations, while Callaghan said “concerted intergovernmental action” was needed for the global economy to emerge from recession.

Harold Wilson and Richard Nixon

February 27, 1969

The Labour prime minister and the Republican president were poles apart, both politically and in their approach. Richard Nixon recoiled from Harold Wilson’s suggestion, made at their first meeting in London in February 1969, that the two men use each other’s first names. Another incident had ratcheted up the tension. Before the 1968 election, when Nixon was expected to lose to vice-president Hubert Humphrey, Wilson appointed his old ally John Freeman as ambassador in Washington. Unfortunately, Freeman had once described Nixon as a “man of no principle”, and the president was not best pleased.

Harold MacMillan and John F. Kennedy

April 4, 1961

After their first meeting, in April 1961 Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and President John F. Kennedy were close allies, despite the stark contrast between the ageing British patrician and the glamorous president 23 years his junior. Macmillan was said to have a very real and lasting affection for a man who was of the same generation as his own son, Maurice. According to his biographer, Macmillan watched JFK on the national stage with “a combination of nervousness and pride an accomplished actor might feel for a mercurial young protege stepping up to take his first starring role in public”.

Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower

January 5, 1953

Winston Churchill arrived in New York to a rapturous reception. He met President-elect Dwight Eisenhower at the apartment of Bernard Baruch, a wealthy businessman, on two separate occasions in the weeks before the inauguration.

They came from different backgrounds, Eisenhower, a Kansas boy, born in a shack beside the railroad tracks in rural Texas, and Churchill, a British aristocrat, born in Blenheim Palace. Yet they had a friendship that was forged in the darkest periods of the Second World War and lasted until Churchill’s death in 1965. — BBC