Boris Johnson and Joe Biden will meet near the cliff tops overlooking the magnificent Carbis Bay in Cornwall, the waves from the Atlantic crashing below.
It won’t have the bodice-ripping tension and tempestuousness of an encounter between Ross Poldark and Demelza – so far the foremost famous pairing from these parts because of the BBC hit drama – but this is often a crucial relationship to observe because it develops.
The reasons why it’d get off to a horrible start are only too easy to enumerate. Biden firmly supported Britain remaining within the EU; Johnson was the leading architect of Brexit.
Biden is probably the foremost “Irish” (I put it in inverted commas because tons of usa citizens publicly life wish to play up their Irish roots – though Biden’s are very clear) of recent US presidents, and therefore the Good Friday Agreement is sacrosanct for him – then he will explain to his British host there are often no tinkering with the Northern Ireland protocol if it puts that long-fought-over agreement in jeopardy.
Boris Johnson clearly wants to urge out of the binding agreement – freely signed by British to urge Brexit done – that in effect puts a import barrier down Irish Sea between mainland Britain and Northern Ireland .
In a pre-visit interview, Joe Biden’s national security adviser told me that Britain shouldn’t underestimate the strength of Biden’s feelings on this subject.
What is the Northern Ireland Protocol?
Don’t imperil NI peace, Biden to warn UK and EU
And then there’s the rear story of the 2 men – Boris Johnson was seen by many within the US as Britain’s Donald Trump (certainly by Donald Trump himself) – a touch chaotic, populist, unpredictable, a rabble rouser. And reciprocally Boris Johnson was lavish in his praise of the previous business tycoon occupying the White House – he was Making America Great Again said British PM; he was deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for his add North Korea .
A statue of Johnson, Biden and other world leaders has been erected on the long-lasting cliffs
image captionA statue of Johnson, Biden and other world leaders has been erected on the long-lasting cliffs
And no-one would say that Joe Biden is cut from an equivalent privileged cloth as Boris Johnson. Somehow i can not quite imagine the young labor Joe from Scranton, Pennsylvania, in Bullingdon Club white tie. Indeed Biden went as far as describing Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone” of Donald Trump.
But equally, if you delve back to the manila folder of yellowing newspaper cuttings – or simply used your program – you’ll find many disobliging comments from BoJo from when he was mayor of London, talking about Trump’s “stupefying ignorance”.
All of which results in a clear point. That was then. now’s now.
Trump and Johnson share laughs at the 2019 summit in France
image captionTrump and Johnson share laughs at the 2019 summit in France
If we’re talking of presidents and PMs not being cut from an equivalent cloth, you’d need to say that David Cameron and Barack Obama were hardly obvious soulmates, yet they forged an in depth working relationship. To Cameron’s credit – he didn’t obsess and fret about the special relationship within the way that some others have done. Remember Gordon Brown chasing Barack Obama through a kitchen at the UN so desperate was he to possess a face to face with the American president?
If you are the British prime minister you create it your business to urge on with whoever the elected US president of the day is. within the days after the 2020 presidential election when Donald Trump was insisting it had been all a fraud and he would overturn the result (actually, come to consider it, seven months on he’s still saying an equivalent thing), the Johnson government was very speedy to notice that Joe Biden was the legitimate victor and was duly congratulated by British . Some countries havered on doing an equivalent , scared of incurring the wrath of Donald Trump.
On a number of the most important ticket items facing the planet , Biden and Johnson are completely aligned. Perhaps most notably, on global climate change |temperature change”> global climate change and therefore the upcoming COP26 UN climate change conference being hosted in Glasgow in November – but also on national security issues, defence co-operation and intelligence sharing, Britain and therefore the US are very closely aligned.
Clinton’s visit to the united kingdom
Go back in history, and few would have imagined that after the apparent bromance between Blair and Clinton , with all their windy rhetoric about The Third Way (I really can’t decide whether the thought deserves capital letters or not – I’ll leave them there for now), that British PM would have transitioned so effortlessly into forging such an in depth relationship with George W Bush – in fact many then criticised Blair for becoming too on the brink of Bill Clinton’s successor.
I think the sole relationship where there was lasting damage came when Clinton was elected president and Major was prime minister. Major’s efforts to assist George HW Bush win re-election by allowing the house Office to seem into whether there was any “dirt” on Clinton from when he was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford was an enormous mistake, and doubtless had an enduring impact.
It’s hard to believe that Biden and Johnson are going to be a recreation of the Thatcher and Reagan relationship – or going back further, Churchill and FDR – Churchill during the terrifying blitz in 1940 would mention courting and cultivating the US leader, endlessly finding ways to capture his attention – and critically support – to bring the US into the Second war .
FDR and Churchill meet in Washington
The other week on our podcast Americast, I spoke to Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, and joked about the special relationship. Remember this is often something that British political class talk far more about than the Americans.
But Rhodes made the purpose that there’s such a commonality of interest, numerous shared values, that once you sit down with British to debate major issues, you invariably end up ranging from an equivalent point. How you get to the top point might differ, but being of like mind may be a good start for the connection between Joe Biden and Boris Johnson. On most things they’re .