President Joe Biden will not join world leaders at the coronation of King Charles III, but he may send Jill Biden or Kamala Harris to London to show support.
- The coronation of King Charles III will take place on May 6 in Westminster Abbey
- President Joe Biden is not expected to attend the ceremony
- A source said the White House is likely to send Jill Biden or Kamala Harris
President Joe Biden is not expected to attend the coronation of King Charles III, according to a source familiar with the planning, but he is expected to send First Lady Gale or Vice President Kamala Harris instead.
Guests, including world leaders, have already been emailed by Buckingham Palace to “save the date” for the May ceremony.
But the American president will not be among them.
This means that it is the second time that Biden has avoided meeting Charles. He is expected to visit Northern Ireland next month, leaving days before Britain’s new monarch arrives to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended decades of violence.
British officials see no disrespect, and have said privately for months that no American president has attended a British coronation.
President Joe Biden is not expected to attend the coronation of King Charles III in May, according to a source. He is likely to send First Lady Jill or Vice President Kamala Harris
Charles became king after the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, in September, but his coronation will take place in a ceremony with 1,000 years of tradition on May 6 in Westminster Abbey.
“We believe the actor will be the first lady or vice president,” said a source familiar with the arrangements.
“For the Queen he was the Governor of California and the Chief of Staff of the US Army.”
The Daily Telegraph newspaper, which was the first to report the news, added that Mrs. Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, and Buckingham Palace aides held “friendly and diplomatic” talks with the White House about the delegation.
A White House official said only that a delegation would be announced in the coming weeks.
Charles became king after the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in September last year.
On May 6 he will be crowned in Westminster Abbey.
The ceremony reflects a thousand years of tradition and the service will be officiated by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
However, Charles overhauled some aspects, cutting the length from three hours to one hour, and trimming the guest list from more than 8,000 guests, for his mother’s, to 2,000.
The White House says it will make a decision on its delegation in the coming weeks. It is understood that it is likely to be chaired by First Lady Jill Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris
The coronation of Elizabeth II took place on June 2, 1953. The US delegation included Earl Warren, Governor of California, and George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army.
Biden and the first lady attended the Queen’s funeral in September last year
He also revamped the guest list so that members of other royal houses and heads of state could attend, rather than keeping the ceremony as one between the monarch and his British subjects.
Many heads of state will attend the event, including those of France, Spain, Ireland, Japan and Monaco.
Critics might use Biden’s absence to suggest that his sympathies lie not with Charles and the United Kingdom, but with Ireland, out of anti-British sentiment.
He is due to visit Northern Ireland and Ireland, where he has distant relatives, next month.
He took on much of his Irish ancestry, and occasionally played down the notion that it made him anti-British.
When a BBC reporter tried to ask him a question in 2020, he replied: ‘BBC? I’m Irish.’