The US and the UK’s special relationship is threatened by Biden’s view on Brexit

Reportedly, Boris Johnson recently joked to his colleagues that at least Joe Biden was one of the few world leaders he hasn’t insulted. Nearly right, as ever, prime minister, they might reply, because you did once disparage President Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, and those like Mr Biden and many incoming officials who served in the Obama administration haven’t forgotten it. 

A few insults of their own about Mr Johnson have been flying around Twitter, while President-elect Biden has called Mr Johnson a “physical and emotional clone” of Donald Trump. Mr Biden, proud of his Irish background, doesn’t seem a natural soulmate of Mr Johnson. Ironically it may be Mr Biden’s ancestry and resentment of British imperialism that causes tensions in the so-called special relationship.  

British officials like to play down such talk, stressing instead common values and shared interests that transcend personalities. That is fair, to an extent. Mr Johnson was not such a clone of President Trump that he took Britain out of the Paris Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, the World Health Organisation or moved the British embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Britain and the US remain close, natural allies, as history shows.

Yet it is a stark fact of political life that the soon-to-be President Biden is able to veto a US-UK trade deal and, for that reason, strengthen the EU’s negotiating position in the UK’s current trade talks. If Brexit and Mr Johnson’s career were based on an assumption of a two-term Trump presidency, then the arrival of President Biden is a disaster.  

British and American interests and values in other words diverge on Brexit, and in the Northern Ireland protocol. British ministers can try to mollify and reassure the new White House all they like, but if Dublin and Brussels tell Washington that the UK approach imperils the Good Friday Agreement, then there will be no trade deal with America. With any deals with Russia or China out for geopolitical reasons, the economic isolation of global Britain will be complete. And so will the humiliation of Boris Johnson.

If the prime minister had more sense, he would wake up to this modern-day Suez crisis and do whatever the new Washington-Dublin-Brussels axis asks. This is because a cave-in is inevitable, given the state of the UK economy and the huge disparity in bargaining by power against two economic superpowers now closely allied. The theoretical assertions of sovereignty in the Internal Market Bill rejected by the House of Lords should be quietly dropped, and David Frost’s negotiating team ordered to be more accommodating. If so, then Mr Johnson may find Mr Biden a much friendlier and more reliable and helpful partner than Donald Trump ever was.