It was a depressing moment for those still nurturing the belief that the United States has a ‘special relationship’ with the UK to hear President Biden refer to the latest prime minister a few weeks ago as “Rashid Sanook”, as if he were part-Arabic, part-Cambodian. Admittedly, the president is prone to senior moments, but it does suggest the White House doesn’t pay as close attention to developments in Westminster as many there would like to believe.
Still, the G20 Summit in Bali next week is another opportunity for Biden to put the right name to a face when he and Rishi Sunak have their bilateral meeting. Though obviously coming from different political traditions, Biden will probably find more in common with Mr Sunak than he did with Boris Johnson, who Biden’s predecessor famously, if ungrammatically, called “Britain Trump”. Washington was never keen on Brexit (recall Barack Obama’s line about being at the back of the queue for a trade deal) and Johnson was the unfortunate progenitor of that benighted project. He bore the mark of Cain. Mr Sunak, though a more sincere Leaver than Johnson, won’t trigger the same instinctive dislike.
The pair will certainly have some common national interests, which has always been the basis of the transatlantic alliance: the international recession, China’s assertive foreign policy, the AUKUS (Australia-UK-US) defence partnership, and of course an honourable end to Russia’s war on Ukraine. Biden will welcome Mr Sunak’s apparently more energetic attempts to resolve the Northern Ireland Protocol, and protect peace in Ireland, a central goal of US foreign policy. Unless president Biden is satisfied that Mr Sunak is serious about that, Britain’s relations with America won’t improve.
