President Joe Biden will represent the United States as the world says goodbye to Queen Elizabeth II, but his third trip to the United Kingdom provides him with the opportunity to reintroduce himself to the new monarch, King Charles III, as well as new Prime Minister Liz Truss.
The president and first lady Jill Biden will travel to the U.K. on Saturday before the late queen’s state funeral next week. But although 10 Downing Street has confirmed a meeting between Joe Biden and Truss, the White House is trying not to distract from the royal pomp and circumstance.
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Mirroring the White House’s diplomacy, American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Dalibor Rohac predicted Sunday’s Biden-Truss meeting would be brief and shallow, focusing on the U.S.’s and U.K.’s continued support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Truss did criticize Joe Biden’s response to Russia’s military buildup along its border with Ukraine.
“Whether the administration is able and willing to help alleviate the U.K.’s, and Europe’s, energy crisis is less clear but worth watching,” Rohac told the Washington Examiner. “It will be telling whether the issue of the Irish border comes up. The U.K. is seeking to revise the existing protocol with the EU — and by any account, it is currently not abiding by it — and the Biden administration has previously inserted itself into those debates, provoking irritation in Westminster,” he added of Westminster Palace, which houses the British Parliament.
Joe Biden first met Charles in 1982 as part of a Senate congressional delegation, speaking with him again twice last year on the sidelines of the G-7 and COP26 summits. Truss, who replaced Boris Johnson last week as Conservative Party leader and prime minister, is also no stranger to the White House. The former foreign secretary met several times with U.S. counterpart Antony Blinken, reportedly confronting him on whether their countries’ relationship could still be described as “special.” At the same time, she may be a welcomed change after Johnson, who cozied up to former President Donald Trump.
“Some of her views are well known — on Ukraine, for example,” Rohac said. “We have to see, however, what broader vision of the U.K.’s place in the world she’s going to pursue.”
Joe Biden and Truss are not ideologically aligned. But for Brookings Institution senior fellow Daniel Sullivan, they have adopted similar approaches to China and face similar economic challenges at home. The former State Department deputy assistant secretary for European affairs’ best advice to Truss on avoiding “a real blowout” with the U.S. is withdrawing Parliament’s Northern Ireland Protocol bill — a move she is unlikely to make. The bill, if passed, would upend the U.K.’s post-Brexit trade deal with the European Union that permits Northern Ireland in the single market and mitigates the need for a hard border between it and the Republic of Ireland.
“They probably just want to reestablish the ties with her in her current position now rather than foreign secretary and just see where they are aligning on issues,” Sullivan said of the White House, including climate change as one example. “That’s a good start to an important partnership.”
But Atlantic Council senior fellow Ben Judah contended the “special relationship” is morphing as the U.K. seeks “cultural distance” from the U.S., “a kind of cooling” of the “love affair” post-Trump and amid “woke” Democrats.
“There’s a growing realization in Britain that America has multiple special relationships,” he said. “A lot of illusions that British people had about their relationship with America are falling away and that Brexit, and the American reaction to Brexit, and this reaction to the death of the queen amongst the American Left is contributing to that.”
The White House declined Friday to preview the Biden-Truss meeting, repeating that the U.K. trip’s purpose was to honor the queen. A day earlier, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not answer questions concerning Joe Biden’s security at the funeral after reports guests will travel together to Westminster Abbey for the service.
“The president has visited the United Kingdom twice since taking office,” she said. “In the lead-up to both of these visits, our team worked seamlessly with the U.K. government, our colleagues there, to ensure all presidential travel [requirements] were met.”
Roughly 2,000 people have been invited to the queen’s funeral. The note verbale invitations the U.K.’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s protocol directorate extended to the U.S. were only issued to the president and first lady.
Joe Biden has been in contact with Truss since her election, days before the queen’s death, because of her victory and a scheduled allies and partners call on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in addition to Europe’s prospective winter energy shortages. After the monarch’s death, the president, a proud Irishman who did not bow when greeting her, ordered flags on all federal buildings, including the White House, be flown at half-staff until Elizabeth is interred in Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel.
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Two months before November’s midterm elections, Joe Biden’s attention will remain on foreign policy next week. The president is expected to address the U.N.General Assembly in New York on Wednesday.
