The U.S. State Department keeps records of visits from foreign leaders but complete records only go back to 1929. Since then, no U.K. prime ministers have visited the U.S. on Inauguration Day.
As invites rolled out for U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, claims circulated online that no U.K prime minister had ever attended a U.S. president's inauguration.
The claims took off after Mike Graham, a host on the British media outlet TalkTV, reported (archived) that U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer had not been invited to Trump's inauguration, calling it, "A massive stain on British history." After the report was posted on X, another user countered (archived): "Is your presenter & production team really just unaware that no British PM in the history of the USA ever yet attended a presidential inauguration?"
(X user @sundersays)
Examples of the claim further circulated following the X user's claim on Jan. 14, on Facebook (archived) and on (archived) X (archived). The claim was also repeated on the popular @Number10cat X account (archived) that impersonates the U.K.'s "chief mouser" — a cat named Larry that lives at the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street in London.