Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has been “taking tips from the Taoiseach” Micheál Martin on how to handle Donald Trump.
Mr Khan, who has had a notoriously testy relationship in public with the US president, will likely be hosting him in the city, possibly next year, when Mr Trump returns to London for an unprecedented second full state visit to Britain.
The London mayor had a far more convivial task on Sunday, however, as he joined politicians from Westminster as well as Minister for Children Norma Foley and Ireland’s ambassador to Britain, Martin Fraser, at the head of the St Patrick’s Day parade in London.
Up to 50,000 people turned out for the event, which set off at noon from Piccadilly and wound its way towards Trafalgar Square.
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Speaking to The Irish Times before the parade, Mr Khan said the Taoiseach had been “pretty classy on diplomacy” in his trip to Washington last week.
“I understand why it is in their national interests for Ireland and also the UK to have close relationships with the US,” he said.
When asked if he was looking forward to hosting the US president, who he once called “a poster boy for racists” and who called him “a stone cold loser”, Mr Khan suggested there would be “lots of Londoners” unhappy with things the US president and had said or done.
“So, if and when there’s a state visit, don’t be surprised if Londoners make their feelings felt,” he added.
Mr Khan said he always looks forward to the St Patrick’s parade in London as a way of recognising the contribution of Irish immigrants to the city over the generations.
He said “the horror” of the “no blacks, no dogs, no Irish” signs was, thankfully, long gone. “St Patrick’s Day is a good reminder of all we have in common,” he said.
Earlier, speaking to The Irish Times at a pre-parade breakfast in Bentley’s seafood restaurant in Mayfair, Ms Foley said she had been impressed by the “spirit of friendship building” she had experienced this week in London.
“More than ever in this topsy-turvy world we’re living in, that friendship is so important,” she said.
The Minister also said she was impressed by the Taoiseach’s diplomacy job in Washington, where he met Mr Trump last Wednesday and managed to mostly avoid the sort of histrionics that have emanated from the Trump White House recently, even as a US-Europe trade war cranked up.
“He was the right man, in the right place at the right time,” she said of her party leader. “I think he also appreciated he was a guest in another person’s house.”
The breakfast was hosted by the members of the parade organising committee including Larry O’Leary, chairman of the west London-based Fr Murphys camogie and ladies football club, as well as gathering’s sponsor Jacqueline O’Donovan, a “cockney woman with the west Cork heart”, who sold her family’s waste disposal business three years ago in a multimillion-pound deal.
When it came time for the parade to set off, Mr Khan, Ms Foley, Mr Fraser and his wife Deirdre Fraser, were at the head of the long line of floats alongside the parade’s two grand marshals, Olympic champion boxer Kellie Harrington and Paralympic cyclist Katie-George Dunlevy.
Harrington was suitably attired in a striking green, white and orange hand-knitted cardigan. She said she got it after meeting a woman in Dublin Airport whose daughter was wearing a hand-knitted outfit.
“I was admiring it,” she said. “And then a few weeks later this [her tricolour outfit] arrived in the post. It was hand knitted for me by that woman’s mother.”
Harrington flipped the cardigan over to show the label, which read “made with love by Mammy O’Hagan”.
“I just love sentimental things,” she said.
The jolly crowds on the parade route around her, decked out in their green finery, would have heartily agreed.
