No, UK Prime Ministers Don't Generally Attend Inauguration Day in US

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.

Here's what we found: The U.S. State Department keeps records of visits from foreign leaders, but these are not complete prior to 1929. Nonetheless, according to this data, no U.K. prime minister has visited the U.S. on Inauguration Day since 1929, and so would not have attended the event. Records from the National Archive in the U.K. show no evidence of prime ministers attending U.S. presidential inaugurations since the Office of the Prime Minister was established in 1916. No photographic evidence in the picture archive Getty exists of U.K prime ministers attending inaugurations between 1877 (the first inauguration since foreign leader visits to the U.S. were first recorded in 1874) and 1929, when complete U.S. records began. Therefore, we rate this claim true, from at least 1929 to 2025.

According to the State Department Office of the Historian, the first U.S. visit by a U.K. prime minister was from James Ramsay MacDonald, from Oct. 4-10, 1929. President Herbert Hoover was inaugurated on March 4 of that year, seven months before MacDonald's visit. U.K. prime ministers have visited the U.S. in 21 inauguration years since 1929, including that year. None of these visits overlapped with Inauguration Day (March 4 in 1929 and 1933, Jan. 20 since then). The closest a U.K. prime minister has come to visiting on Inauguration Day was Theresa May in 2021, who visited the U.S. on Jan. 27, 2017, one week after the first inauguration of President Donald Trump. The U.S. State Department has recorded visits from every consecutive U.K. prime minister since Clement Attlee, who visited in 1945. Even Liz Truss, who held the post for just 45 days in 2022, managed to squeeze in a visit.

The State Department also has incomplete records prior to 1929. Nine inauguration years are missing from records between 1874 and 1929. A further five inauguration years (1881, 1909, 1913, 1921 and 1925) are recorded but without visits from a U.K. prime minister.

Trump has bucked tradition on Inauguration Day invites, according to reports, by inviting several foreign leaders, including China's President Xi Jinping. Other notable guests include TikTok CEO Shou Chew, who is expected to attend, according to Trump transition officials cited by NBC, the day after the video-sharing app will likely be hit with a ban in the U.S.

Laerke Christensen is a journalist based in London, England, with expertise in OSINT reporting.