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Congratulations from England have not met with approval anywhere in America. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had just tweeted his congratulations to future US President Joe Biden on Saturday night when an old friend of Biden’s spoke, including via Twitter. Johnson was a “disgusting shapeshifter,” said Tommy Vietor. And: “We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and your slavish devotion to Trump.”
The good news for Britain: Vietor, once a foreign policy spokesperson for the Obama / Biden administration, is unlikely to return to Washington. The bad: His opinion of Johnson is fairly shared by some US Democrats.
From the weekend at the latest, many in London have wondered whether Johnson’s well-practiced practice of revising viewpoints and beliefs at will would be enough to successfully captivate Joe Biden. So if the ritually invoked “special relationship” with the United States remains as special as it has been for the past four years.
Johnson recorded on the “partly Kenyan” Obama
It will be hard work for the British Prime Minister. As early as December 2019, shortly after his triumphant electoral victory, Biden made many derogatory comments about Johnson. This is a “physical and emotional clone” of Trump. The reason the otherwise jovial Democrat was so undiplomatic was apparently due to a 2016 incident.
Then, just before the Brexit referendum, Johnson publicly protested the removal of a bust of Winston Churchill from the White House. Obama’s decision, according to Johnson, is a symbol of “the aversion that the ancestors of the partly Kenyan president feel for the British Empire”. Those were the same racist undertones Trump used to get votes in his first election campaign. Biden, a close friend of Obama, has not forgotten.
Brexit and Trump, for Biden and the US Democrats, are symptoms of the same populist and nationalist evil they have sworn to fight. Trump himself had repeatedly invoked parallels by celebrating Brexit and ennobling his frontman Johnson as “British Trump”. And while London has recently made a major effort to keep its distance from Trump: US Democrats are very suspicious.
Downing Street is launching a charm offensive
And it’s not just about Johnson. Michael Gove, responsible for Brexit implementation in the British cabinet, is also denounced in Biden’s team as a friend of the far right and Republicans. Washington has not heard of Johnson’s foreign minister Dominic Raab mocking the kneeling protest of the “Black Lives Matter” movement as “submission and submission.” For Biden, who has made fighting systemic racism a priority, these are no small feat.
It was Raab who was sent from Downing Street over the weekend to send conciliatory signals to Washington. On the BBC, the foreign minister pledged to the prosperous relationship and promised that in the future “we would listen very carefully to our American friends”, especially those on Capitol Hill “and in the Irish lobby”.
This last observation in particular is significant, as it aims at a central point of contention that has accompanied Brexit negotiations for years: the question of whether and how Brexit, which should finally end on December 31, jeopardizes unstable peace in Northern Ireland. becomes.
Biden makes Brexit deal more likely
In September, Johnson nearly broke off negotiations with the European Union on future relations when he tabled a bill that could ultimately lead to a hard border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, a blatant violation of international law. who revived London of violence in the province of riots.
Joe Biden, whose ancestors are from Ballina in the West of Ireland and who calls himself Irish, was one of those screaming at the time. Johnson shouldn’t be wrong, he made it known at the time: if his Brexit jeopardized peace in (Northern) Ireland, Britain would not get the trade deal with the United States, which it so urgently needs to to be able to survive in a post-EU future.
Joe’s Distant Cousins: Celebration in Ballina, Ireland, where Biden’s ancestors came from
Photo: Peter Morrison / dpa
In this regard, Biden’s election could have a significant impact on Brexit negotiations that have stalled for months. Johnson’s determination to dare to break with the EU without a treaty if necessary is likely to have diminished with the departure of his most powerful friend Donald Trump. “A deal is close at hand,” Raab said over the weekend. There is still about a week left for this.
London is no longer a beachhead for the EU
But even if a breakthrough were to succeed – as there is much to be said about it – there is still a long way to go before the British-American “special” relationship is relaunched. Britain has always been an important ally for the United States in recent decades because, as a powerful member of the EU, it has a say in the politics of the bloc.
The country will no longer play this role after Brexit. But Biden wants to reinforce US influence in Europe again – his natural contacts for that should be Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.
Johnson tries his best not to get crushed in the big game of powerful blocks. On Sunday he congratulated Biden again and called the United States his country’s “closest and most important ally”. There are many “crucial things” you can work on together. What he means is traditionally close cooperation between security authorities and secret services or a resolute policy towards Russia and China.
Johnson relies on the climate
Most importantly, Johnson now serves the President of the United States as a conscientious ally in the fight against climate change. Britain will host the next UN climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021. Johnson would be only too happy to announce there with Biden that the United States will rejoin the Paris climate protection agreement – and thus perhaps heal his own. personal relationship with the next president of the United States. “It unites us much more than it divides us,” Johnson says.
To what extent Joe Biden is willing to leave the past behind will also be decided by the question of who he will send as US ambassador to London in the future. The names are already circulating in the British press, including one Johnson’s conservatives tend to fear: Barack Obama’s.
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