UK/US relations: Tory chickens coming home to roost

 

It is suspected that our Government was actually hoping for a Trump win.  If true there can be no more damning  evidence of our increasing isolation among the world's liberal democracies.  

To add to our shame there are good reasons to expect that our  future relations with the US are going to be somewhat frosty, due to the opinions and actions of Tory leaders pasy and present.

 Back in 1916 while he was Mayor of London, when President Barack Obama  expressed support for Britain's remaining in Europe, Mr  Johnson dismissed him as  " part- Kenyan with an ancestral hostility to the British Empire."  Probably true, and not quite as contemptuous as Winston Churchill's dismissal of Mahatma Gandhi as "a half-naked Fakir" but not all that friendly either. President-Elect Biden was Obama's Vice President and they are said to have been very close, almost brothers.

Then in the first week of the Trump Presidency our  then Prime Minister Theresa May scuttled across the  Atlantic to be the first foreign leader greet him and fawn at his coat-tails.  She even invited him to make a State Visit, something which is normally offered only towards the end of a presidency.  When it eventually took place it must have been a considerable embarrassment to the Queen and most of the people involved.  Mr Biden is clearly a generous and forgiving man, but he is hardly likely to be impressed by this fawning on his odious predecessor.

Indeed, Mr Biden is on record as having described PM Johnson as  a "physical and emotional clone of Trump. 

And right down to the events of last week, when it was clear that Joe Biden was the winner although  the victory was not yet official, whereas most democracies, with Germany in the lead, were sending him their congratulations, the British Government was still prevaricating.

Mr Biden's record shows that he is a consummate politician who will not allow personal animosity to damage fruitful diplomatic relations.

But there are two concrete issues which indicate that the UK is far from the "best mate" status British governments would  dearly like.

The first is the EU.  Mr Biden has made it perfectly clear, as did Obama, that the US would much prefer the UK to remain a member.  He is unlikely to go out of his was to rescue us from our own folly.

Secondly is Ireland.  Mr Biden is of Irish extraction and  will be appalled by any measure that endangers the Good Friday agreement  and risks damaging the peace which, fragile as it is, still prevails there.

Such a measure is the Internal Market bill, which if passed will not only break international law and violate the agreement to which Mr Johnson and his government signed up to less than a year ago, but also endangers that peace. The House of Lords is likely to pass amendments to the bill his afternoon.

PM Johnson should whip his 80 majority into accepting them