US president Donald Trump has refused to travel to the UK to open the new American embassy – and hit out at the location of the 1.2 billion dollar (£886 million) project.
Writing on Twitter, Mr Trump said he thought the embassy’s move from Grosvenor Square in the prestigious Mayfair district of central London to an “off location” at Nine Elms, south of the Thames, was a “bad deal”.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said his visit would have been met with “mass peaceful protests” but Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accused the Labour politician of putting UK-US relations at risk.
Mr Trump wrote: “Reason I cancelled my trip to London is that I am not a big fan of the Obama Administration having sold perhaps the best located and finest embassy in London for “peanuts,” only to build a new one in an off location for 1.2 billion dollars.
“Bad deal. Wanted me to cut ribbon-NO!”
Mr Khan, who clashed with the US president after Mr Trump attacked his handling of the London Bridge terror attack, said: “It appears that President Trump got the message from the many Londoners who love and admire America and Americans but find his policies and actions the polar opposite of our city’s values of inclusion, diversity and tolerance.”
Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, an ally of the US president, suggested the risk of protests may have been behind the decision to abandon the trip.
“Maybe, just maybe, Sadiq Khan, Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party planning mass protests, maybe those optics he didn’t like the look of,” Mr Farage told the BBC.
Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson also hit out at Labour, saying: “The US is the biggest single investor in the UK – yet Khan and Corbyn seem determined to put this crucial relationship at risk.
“We will not allow US-UK relations to be endangered by some puffed up pompous popinjay in City Hall.”
British government sources said they had never officially been informed of a date for Mr Trump to make a visit, but speculation had suggested he would formally open the embassy at a ceremony in February.
The new building will open for business on January 16.
In December Ambassador Woody Johnson said he was looking forward to welcoming the president when he visited, adding: “I think he will be very impressed with this building and the people who occupy it.”
He said the new embassy was a “signal to the world that this special relationship that we have is stronger and is going to grow and get better”.
Despite Mr Trump publicly blaming predecessor Barack Obama, the US announced plans to move to the new site in October 2008 when George W Bush was in the White House.
Prime Minister Theresa May met US President Donald Trump in September (Stefan Rousseau/PA)
On the embassy web page about the project, it said: “The project has been funded entirely by the proceeds of the sale of other US Government properties in London, not through appropriated funds.”
Mrs May controversially extended the offer of a state visit, officially on behalf of the Queen, when she became the first world leader to meet Mr Trump in the White House following his inauguration last year.
Since then, however, the president has indicated he does not want to take up the invitation if he is going to face mass demonstrations and it had been expected he could make a low-key working visit rather than a trip which involved all the trappings of a state occasion.
Mrs May and Mr Trump fell out spectacularly in November over his retweeting of anti-Muslim videos posted online by the deputy leader of the far-right Britain First group, Jayda Fransen.
At the time, the PM said Mr Trump was “wrong” to retweet the videos, and the US president hit back at Mrs May on Twitter by telling her to focus on “destructive radical Islamic terrorism” in the UK, rather than on him.