What would President Biden mean for Britain, Brexit and Boris?
On June 24th 2016, the day after the UK voted to leave the European Union, Vice-President Joe Biden was in Dublin reflecting on his Irish roots. He offered his retort, lashing out at “reactionary politicians and demagogues peddling xenophobia, nationalism and isolationism”. Four and a half years later, Biden appears poised to seize the White House and become the care-taker of transatlantic relations. What would a President Biden mean for Britain, Brexit and Boris?
With regards to Ireland, one of the hallmark accomplishments of post-war US foreign policy is the influential role the country played in securing peace through the Good Friday Agreement. Biden, who spent six years chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is very much invested in safeguarding this agreement by both the role he has played in the US foreign policy establishment and his Irish roots.
Boris Johnson’s controversial Internal Market Bill, which would break international law and diverge from provisions in the EU withdrawal agreement designed to prevent a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, threatens to stir trouble in the future of the special relationship. Biden has stated already that he will not entertain the prospect of peace in Ireland becoming a causality of Brexit.
“Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent on respect for the [Good Friday] agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.” — Democratic Nominee for President — Joe Biden, 16/09/2020
A President Biden could force Johnson to recalibrate his negotiations with the EU. Whitehall would abruptly transition from dealing with a President who once told Theresa May to sue the EU for a better trade deal, to working with a foreign policy heavyweight who will prioritise repairing relationships with EU leaders over forging a trade deal with a country he deems to be “at the back of the queue”.
Biden’s strong stance on the issue has been echoed across the US political spectrum, with Trump loyalist and Irish envoy Mick Mulvaney commenting last month that the Good Friday Agreement was “at risk” and that was something that the Trump administration was “very interested in seeing not happen”. This might mean that no matter who wins the White House, transatlantic relations are at risk.
“The UK is going to be in the back of the queue” — President Obama, 2016.
It’s clear that Biden takes a negative view of Brexit, but could he manage a special relationship with the man at the helm? President Trump once described Johnson as “Britain Trump” and the problem for the Prime Minister is that Biden seems to agree. Speaking at a primary campaign fundraiser in 2019, Biden denounced Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone of the President”.
The former Vice President may also have not forgotten comments Johnson made following Obama’s intervention in the Brexit referendum. Writing in a column for the Sun newspaper, Johnson claimed that Obama’s part Kenyan heritage had driven him towards “anti-British” sentiment. Johnson’s comments were widely regarded as racist.
However, it is important to bear in mind that Johnson has been somewhat of a political shapeshifter over the past few years. As foreign secretary, then a backbench critic of his predecessors efforts and now as Prime Minister he has managed to woo President Trump. Seemingly, his charm campaign has caused President Trump to forget about their 2015 feud when Johnson was Mayor of London. In response to Trump’s baseless claims that London had “no-go areas” because of Islamic extremism, Johnson branded the President “Out of his mind.”, “Unfit to hold the office of President of the United States” and claimed that he would welcome Trump to London except that he “wouldn’t want to expose Londoners to any unnecessary risk of meeting Donald Trump”.
Biden is similarly affable in his ability to build relationships with those ideologically distant. His core values of unity, cooperation and bipartisanship were forged during his 38 years in the US senate and would no doubt be applied to his foreign policy. Those in a Biden administration would also be unlikely to judge Johnson’s efforts to form a close relationship with Trump, especially in light of the challenges placed upon US allies during his term.
Regardless of personal and political differences, the two men will be grateful to find common ground on a number of issues. In a decade already defined by a relentless pandemic and global economic crisis, the UK will be happy to see American leadership emerge from a hibernation period to join the fight against Covid-19. Biden’s climate change objectives, a marked contrast from those of President Trump, would set the stage for transatlantic collaborations which would only benefit the UK. And of course, the US and UK will have to keep their guard up against China, Iran and Russia. The special relationship will have to endure if only for the scale of shared challenges faced by the US and UK.
