By Tony O’Riley-
Nigel Farage is probably right about the challenges Downing Street surely faces with this new Biden administration.
The political activist and former Brexit Party leader may face real challenges in working closely and effectively with the Biden administration unless the waiting obstacles potentially facing Boris Johnson’s government in maintaining the traditionally and historical good relationship between Washington and Westminster is carefully prepared for.
Biden is un-mistakingly a more dignified president than president Trump, but you wouldn’t bet on his administration having the same level of chemistry Trump had with Downing Street during his four years as president. Now resisting the U.S election results, only a court can restore his dream of a second term, if his camp provide unheard of evidence of electoral fraud. Analysts doubt there is any chance of that occurring, but due process must still take its course.
The Trump administration had a notably warm relationship with the Uk, although the U.S president was also notorious for making derogatory comments about his political counterparts in the Uk, particularly Theresa May, with whom he in parts enjoyed a good relationship.
Trump was always overly complimentary about Boris Johnson, just as freely as he was insolent to other world leaders. Trump’s many critics have always labelled the U.S president a disaster. In just as chaotic a manner the political atmosphere in the U.S is, the American president once sparked alarm when he seemed to exalt Farage above the elected prime minister.
Johnson has challenged claims that his government will struggle to get along with the Biden administration, but an article by Nigel Farage in the Telegraph makes provides some food for thought.
Mr.Farage- an avid supporter of president Trump- makes reference to April 2016, just before the EU referendum, Barack Obama telling the British people that if we dared to vote for Brexit our country would be at “the back of the queue” in terms of a trade deal because America’s focus would be on negotiating with the EU? Well, Obama’s vice president at the time was Biden, and his personal dislike of Brexit has not changed since then.
”Indeed, Biden is an avid supporter of the EU and his priority will be to improve relations between his country and the bloc. Obama used to fly to mainland Europe first rather than the United Kingdom. Biden will do the same”, Farage writes.
”To complicate things further, Biden is a supporter of Irish nationalism and in the 1990s he lobbied hard for the then-Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to visit the USA. As recently as 2017, he met Adams to discuss a united Ireland. More astonishing still, at that meeting he was also photographed with one Rita O’Hare, an IRA fugitive who attempted to kill a British Army officer in the 1970s.
Farage says that Biden and Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, have already swallowed the Dublin and Brussels line that a Brexit deal must not threaten the 1998 Belfast Agreement, even though that agreement doesn’t even mention trade.
”If you are still in any doubt about Biden’s antipathy towards the UK, just look at his response to the BBC journalist Nick Bryant who asked him on Saturday if he had anything to say to the British state broadcaster. “The BBC? I’m Irish,” he replied as he walked off. He might just as well have stuck two fingers up:
Farage suggests that when it comes to climate change and taking a softer line against China, Johnson and Biden will be more aligned. But the same cannot be said of the issue that took Johnson to power and which will define his legacy, Brexit.
He says Anthony Gardner, the former US Ambassador to the European Union and a close confidant of Biden’s, has already said that future relations between the UK and America will depend on our final deal with the EU.
Checkmate
Farage claims the Uk has played itself into a form of checkmate. Brexit talks have stalled and this time the clock is genuinely running down, he says. ”Johnson now faces a simple choice. He can either strike a deal with which both Washington and Brussels are happy, or he can go it alone and be criticised for looking friendless in the world.
”In this, he will be cheered on by the global corporations and by most of our mainstream media. We will be told that a sensible compromise has been reached and that Boris has acted like a statesman, but of course Britain will come off second best.
In the next few months, I predict there will be a reappraisal of Donald Trump’s presidency. While his New York outspokenness never went down well with the British electorate, these negative views may well have to be revised.
”In Trump, Britain has lost a true ally and friend. Furthermore, a final Brexit deal that holds our nation back, that doesn’t genuinely make us free, and that doesn’t deliver on the promises made both in 2016 and the general election in 2019 is now looking like a certainty.