Donald Trump has backed off the idea of visiting Britain next month to open the new US embassy in London amid fears of mass protests.
Government sources suggested that Washington had signalled that secretary of state Rex Tillerson would instead open the multimillion-pound embassy.
Theresa May invited Trump for a state visit when she became the first world leader to visit the president in the White House a year ago.
With activists pledging to stage mass protests and MPs determined not to give the president the opportunity to address parliament, no date for a state visit has been set.
Instead, it had been expected that Trump would make a brief, less formal “working visit” next month, to cut the ribbon on the $1bn (£750m) embassy in Nine Elms, south-west London, and hold meetings with May.
Officials had been examining plans for the president to meet the Queen, without the pomp of a full-blown state banquet, with the attendant risk of disruptive protests.
However, even that more modest plan now appears to have been abandoned for the time being.