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Examining the UK-US 'special relationship': How will Joe Biden and Boris Johnson work together?

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in a golf cart at Camp David in 1984 - AP
Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in a golf cart at Camp David in 1984 - AP

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What's the story?

It was a shock to many when Boris Johnson was one of the first world leaders to receive a call from Joe Biden.

After all, they hadn't got off to the most auspicious of starts.

The Democrat described the Prime Minister as a “physical and emotional clone” of Donald Trump last December.

On top of that, people around the President-elect still grudgingly remember how Mr Johnson once suggested former President Barack Obama harboured anti-British sentiment because of his “part-Kenyan” ancestry.

Then there was the Twitter blunder which saw the Prime Minister send a congratulatory message to Mr Biden containing parts of a statement intended for Mr Trump.

The biggest stumbling block, however, is undoubtedly Brexit.

Mr Biden, a man who is proud of his Irish roots, believes that Brexit is a historic mistake.

The Prime Minister’s plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement with the Internal Market Bill have not sat well with his camp either.

“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” warned Biden at the time of the publication of the legislation.

“Any trade deal between the US and UK must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and preventing the return of a hard border. Period.”

But despite the rumbling tensions, it feels as if the administrations have attempted to reach out to each other in recent days.

Diplomats had predicted that Mr Johnson would be "low on the list" of the President-elect's phone calls with world leaders, but they couldn't have been more wrong.

The Prime Minister was the second confirmed world leader to congratulate Mr Biden, scooping even French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mr Johnson had earlier sent his hearty congratulations to Mr Biden in a video message in which he said he had “no doubt” that UK-US relations would continue to be “very, very strong”.

“Suddenly with the advent of President-elect Biden we’re seeing the US really willing to take a lead too on climate change which I think is great news, to say nothing of NATO and all sorts of other things,” he said.

Meanwhile, Senator Chris Coons – who is widely tipped to become Mr Biden’s Secretary of State – described the Prime Minister as “more agile, engaging, educated and forward-looking, than perhaps the caricature of him in the American press would have suggested".

However, Mr Coons warned that the trade deal is only "one of the most important aspects of the US-UK relationship", suggesting that it would not receive the same priority as under President Trump.

He said: "We're going to have our hands full working through the pandemic now that it is surging again in both of our nations, restoring the vibrancy of our economy – and a big part of restoring the vibrancy of our economy is making closer the ties between the United States and the UK and moving towards a free trade agreement."

Looking back

During a Christmas visit by Sir Winston Churchill to the United States in 1941, President Franklin D Roosevelt called on his ally in his White House quarters and found him fresh from his bath and completely naked.

Embarrassed, the President made to leave but the Prime Minister stopped him with the line: “The Prime Minister of Great Britain has nothing to conceal from the President of the United States.”

The encounter, for some, exemplifies the UK-US relationship. However, others argue it is a chronically lopsided friendship.

Indeed, Sir Winston had exhausted his skills of charm and persuasion on the President in the weeks and months preceding the visit to try and secure American support for World War Two.

However, Mr Roosevelt had pledged to keep the nation out of “Europe’s war” and restricted US involvement to supplying arms and aid.

In the end it was Adolf Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, followed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which finally forced President Roosevelt to act.

By the end of the war, the US and Britain were undoubtedly close allies, but by 1952, the White House was becoming increasingly frustrated at what it saw as British attempts to undermine the emerging reconciliation between France and Germany.

This feeling bubbled over during the Suez crisis, which would mark the end of Britain's imperial influence.

France and Britain acted independently of Washington and sent troops to seize the Suez Canal, which the then-prime minister, Anthony Eden, had spoken of as Britain's "great imperial lifeline".

The US was not informed of the military operation, and President Eisenhower used the crisis to demonstrate how power had shifted by refusing to allow the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to grant Britain emergency loans unless it called off the invasion.

It was a key turning point in the relationship and Britain never acted against the explicit wishes of Washington again.

The relationship warmed up again in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan found in each other a political soulmate.

The free marketeers both worked to dismantle government bureaucracies and deregulate key industries, and aligned together to tear down the Iron Curtain.

There were tensions over the 1982 Falklands War and again a year later with the US invasion of Grenada but despite some disagreements the two remained life-long friends.

"It all worked," Lady Thatcher would later remark, "because he was more afraid of me than I was of him”.

Tony Blair was similarly close with George W Bush but the relationship created problems for the prime minister domestically, and led to him being lampooned as the President’s poodle.

Critics say Mr Blair’s support of the US-led Iraq War tarnished his entire time in office.

Theresa May was also widely mocked when pictures emerged of her holding the hand of President Trump during a White House visit.

Anything else I need to know?

Officials hope that tackling climate change could become a unifying force for the Johnson-Biden relationship.

Indeed, the Prime Minister has already said that with Mr Biden in the White House "we have the real prospect of American global leadership in tackling climate change".

He added: "The UK was the first major country to set out that objective of net zero by 2050. We led the way a few years ago. And we're really hopeful now that President Biden will follow and will help us to deliver a really good outcome of the COP26 summit next year in Glasgow.”

Mr Johnson invited the President-elect to the UN Climate Change Conference during their 25-minute phone call on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed that he had already spoken about the ways the two nations could work together on the issue with Mr Coons, who is expected to become his opposite number.

Speaking ahead of the US election, the chair of the UK’s Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Tugendhat said that climate change was a way for the Government to repair its relations with the Biden camp.

He said: “If we’re sensible, what we will see is the UK offering the Biden White House a very generous share of the COP talks in order to bring them in. Will it work? I don’t know but, at the moment, given the frostiness of the relationship between the putative White House and the actual Number 10 it does seem as though something will be needed.”

The Refresher take

Boris Johnson must have been waiting for his first phone call from President-elect Joe Biden like a nervous teenager about to speak to a first date.

Searching for a free trade deal, Mr Johnson had cosied up to Biden's predecessor to the extent that the President had christened him “Britain Trump”.

So Mr Johnson will be greatly relieved that Mr Biden chose to make Britain his second phone call in a round of world leaders, after Canada’s Justin Trudeau.

The President-elect – with decades of foreign policy experience as a Washington insider – will be only too aware that Britain is the US’s most important intelligence partner and one of the biggest contributors to NATO.

From his vice presidential days, Biden will know Britain has been a steadfast ally on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Despite apparent differences over Brexit, the US and Britain, both seeking to crank up Covid-hit economies and rebuild for a green future, may find there is much still special about their relationship.