Joe Biden White House will work closely with Boris Johnson, says potential Biden appointee
Joe Biden will work closely with Boris Johnson and the UK government if elected President despite concerns from Downing Street, according to a potential administration appointee.
Former Bernie Sanders adviser Robert Hockett – who has been tipped in some Democratic circles to be appointed to a government position by Biden as a standard bearer of the party’s left – told City A.M. it was highly unlikely Biden would hold a grudge against Johnson for trying to curry favour with Donald Trump’s White House.
Recent UK media reports have speculated Downing Street is worried a Biden administration would be frosty toward Johnson and his team.
The Prime Minister has been publicly supportive of Trump and has been seen in America as being cut from a similar populist cloth due to his leadership of the Brexit campaign.
Johnson in 2016 also made controversial comments about Barack Obama, saying his opposition to Brexit was due to “the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire”.
Foreign secretary Dominic Raab and British ambassador to the US Dame Karen Pierce have been meeting with key Democrats in recent weeks as an attempt to smooth things over with Biden’s team.
However, Hockett, who helped write Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s Green New Deal, said Biden was an old school Washington pragmatist who understands Johnson is “above all an opportunist”.
“Biden’s status as an old time ‘pol’, as we call them in the States, is maybe going to work to his advantage and to the advantage of transatlantic relationships and the whole special relationship between the UK and US,” he said.
“One characteristic of this old style American politician is conveying a sense of friendliness and personal warmth and even kind of meaning it – it’s not just opportunistically pretending, but just kind of being an all hail well met sort of fellow.
“My guess is Mr Johnson immediately is all over Mr Biden like a dirty shirt and that Mr Biden will be perfectly fine with that, because he knows how politics works and his team will be fine with it too.”
Biden holds a double digit lead in most polls and is a short priced favourite with bookmakers to win the election on 3 November.
Many have argued that a UK-US trade deal would be off the table if the polls are correct as it would not be a priority for the former Vice President.
Former chancellor George Osborne said this week that Downing Street would find it “hard to pivot towards a Biden administration”.
“There’ll be some very specific things like whether the UK does a trade deal with the US, where Joe Biden has already indicated and people like Nancy Pelosi have indicated that is going to be hard work for the British government,” he said.
“So there’s a lot of frantic repositioning going on at the moment here in London by this administration in Britain.”