Sunak-Biden talks: can Rishi revive the ‘special relationship’?

Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden will meet in Washington this week in what is seen as a potential easing of post-Brexit tensions in the so-called “special relationship”.

It is the fourth meeting between Sunak and Biden in as many months after the Aukus defence summit in March, the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Good Friday Agreement in Belfast in April and last month’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima. It is “more sustained contact than any other British prime minister in recent years”, said The Sunday Times.

Sunak “loves America” and the former US green card holder has “evidently charmed Biden”, said The Independent. Crucially, he has managed “to dispel some of the transatlantic tensions seen when Boris Johnson and Liz Truss occupied No 10”.

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Although Biden and Sunak differ vastly in political philosophy, age and experience, “they are both hoping that they can ‘re-spark’ the special relationship”, wrote Andrew Hammond, an associate at the LSE IDEAS foreign policy think tank, for Arab News, “after years in the deep freeze”.

What did the papers say?

Americans “are rolling out the red carpet” for Sunak’s visit, said The Independent.

He will be the first British prime minister since David Cameron to stay at Blair House, known as the President’s Guest House. Sunak may even throw the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game, “a special ritual usually reserved for US politicians” and celebrities, including Mariah Carey and Prince Harry.

“We can expect the usual misguided talk of the US being the UK’s ‘closest partner’,” wrote Andrew Lilico for The Daily Telegraph, “and someone is bound to wheel out the hackneyed phrase ‘the Special Relationship’.”

“The reality,” said Lilico, executive director of consultancy firm Europe Economics, “is that the US is not the UK’s closest partner by any means.”

However, it is “an economic and military superpower”, he added, “reasonably friendly to the UK most of the time”, and a collaborator on issues such as artificial intelligence (AI), the fight against climate change and the Aukus submarine defence pact between the US, UK and Australia.

Sunak should gauge Biden’s commitment to continuing to arm Ukraine, his appetite for assisting Europe with energy supplies if the war drags on and US intentions if China attacks Taiwan, he added. “There will be much to discuss if not too much time is wasted on flim-flam about ‘special relationships’.”

It could be “the most constructive meeting” of any UK and US leaders since Barack Obama’s presidency, said LSE’s Hammond, but mainly because “the bar was set so low by Sunak’s predecessors in Downing Street”.

Sunak “would be wise not to overestimate the UK’s ability to shape US power”, the website said, nor be blind to the possibility that Biden may “care significantly less for core UK interests” than he has in the past, given his pro-EU outlook.

Biden and the Democrats “resent” the destabilisation of Northern Ireland and the lessening of the UK’s influence in Europe post-Brexit, said the Financial Times.

But “the issue of Ukraine has brought the two sides closer together”, and Sunak’s so-called Windsor framework, which addressed the “post-Brexit mess” of the Northern Ireland protocol, “did win respect in the US”, the FT said.

“As with all prime ministerial trips to Washington,” said The Sunday Times, “appearances are nearly as important to success as substance.”

What next?

Sunak will emphasise Britain’s potential as a global leader on regulation and development of AI, suggesting the UK as a centre for a regulatory body similar to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Sunak’s adviser on AI, Matt Clifford, told TalkTV that the technology could become powerful enough to “kill many humans” in only two years, Sky News reported. Even the short-term risks were “pretty scary”, Clifford said.

On Thursday, Sunak will address an annual gathering of chief executives from America’s biggest companies, organised by the Business Roundtable: the first British prime minister to do so for 50 years.

Attendants “contribute to our £279 billion trade relationship with the US”, said The Sunday Times, “and their investments create thousands of British jobs”.

According to the FT, Sunak “will not make a big issue in Washington” about Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act – a green subsidy package for American firms “widely criticised by British ministers as protectionist”.

But Washington has remained “distinctly cool” on bilateral post-Brexit trade agreements, “the major prize eyed by Brexiteers” for which Johnson promised the UK would be “first in line”, said The Independent.

And Americans “may not believe a line can be drawn” under the Good Friday Agreement dispute until power sharing is restored at Stormont, the website added.