sincere question about Biden and the ongoing Brexit situation

[steve2470]

I have a UK friend who claimed (without evidence or citations) that Biden is being viewed negatively in the UK for a comment he made about Brexit. This is what I have found:

https://www.reuters.com/article/britain-eu/biden-warns-uk-on-brexit-no-trade-deal-unless-you-respect-n-irish-peace-pact-idINKBN2680SR

SEPTEMBER 17, 2020 2:35 AM updated a day ago

LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden warned the United Kingdom that it must honour Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace agreement as it withdraws from the European Union or there would be no separate U.S. trade deal.


Prime Minister Boris Johnson is proposing new legislation that would break the Northern Ireland protocol of the Brexit divorce treaty that seeks to avoid a physical customs border between British-ruled Northern Ireland and EU-member Ireland.

“We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit,” Biden said in a tweet on Wednesday.

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

I have no idea what media she consumes in the UK. I wanted to avoid an argument, so I changed the topic as fast as I could.

Is this on the UK political radar at all ? Thank you for your response.


Steve

[soothsayer]

1. That's the only one I know of

‘DON’T LECTURE UK’

The intervention by Biden, who nationwide polls show leading the race for Nov. 3’s U.S. election, prompted a sharp rebuke from an ex-leader of Johnson’s Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, who advised him to focus on “riots” rather than Brexit.

“We don’t need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden,” Duncan Smith told The Times. “If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the USA to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.”

[steve2470]

2. thank you! nt

[Soph0571]

3. Yeah the right wing media is doing one.

That is what they do.

[T_i_B]

4. Brexshitters are gambling heavily on Trump winning re-election

If Biden wins the Tories will be in trouble as they have allied very heavily with President Fart and gone out of their way to alienate Democrats.

What you have to remember with Brexshitters is that they are incredibly nasty towards anyone who raises any criticism of their pet project, no matter how constructive.

[Denzil_DC]

5. Yes, it's on the political radar.

So is the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus soon, if we're not already in it (currently 80 cases reported in my small village resulting from a funeral wake ten days ago), so it's all part of the general noise.

The internal market bill currently passing through parliament has been cause for concern for a number of weeks on many fronts, both domestic (it threatens to undo aspects of devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and internationally (unless it's radically redrawn, the bill envisions the UK government knowingly breaching international law, defaulting to a hard Northern Ireland/Ireland border if there's no deal with the EU, and basically being able to rewrite laws on the fly with little or no parliamentary scrutiny).

Your friend may have an agenda (don't we all?). Biden's statement followed those from Pelosi, Schumer et al., which followed multiple TV interviews with Congressman Brendan Boyle over the last six months or so, all singing from the same songbook, so it should hardly have come as a surprise.

What your friend may not realize (because many in the UK don't have much understanding of the US governmental apparatus) is that decisions like this are not the sole gift of the president. Even if (horrible thought) Biden fails to win the election, there's a strong bipartisan pro-Irish lobby in the Senate and House that would bear out what Biden and others have been saying:

Boris Johnson has presented a trade deal with the US as a way of offsetting the economic costs of leaving the EU, and Donald Trump promised the two countries could strike “a very substantial trade agreement” that would increase trade “four or five times”.

Trump, however, would not be able to push an agreement through a hostile Congress, where there would be strong bipartisan opposition to any UK trade deal in the event of a threat to the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and to the open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.
...
“The American dimension to the Good Friday agreement is indispensable,” said Richard Neal, who is co-chair of the 54-strong Friends of Ireland caucus in Congress, and also chairs the powerful House ways and means committee, with the power to hold up a trade deal indefinitely.

“We oversee all trade agreements as part of our tax jurisdiction,” Neal, a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts, said in a phone interview. He pointed out that such a complex trade deal could take four or five years, even without the Northern Ireland issue.
...
Pete King, the Republican co-chair of the Friends of Ireland group, said the threat to abandon the backstop and endanger the open border was a “needless provocation”, adding that his party would have no compunction about defying Trump over the issue.

“I would think anyone who has a strong belief in Northern Ireland and the Good Friday agreement the open border would certainly be willing to go against the president,” King said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/31/brexit-mess-with-good-friday-and-well-block-uk-trade-deal-us-politicians-warn

Ask your friend how she feels about this story:

Donald’s Trump special envoy to Northern Ireland has warned of the risk of creating a hard “border by accident” on the island of Ireland, as Boris Johnson’s newly drafted plan to rewrite the withdrawal agreement was rejected again by the EU.

Mick Mulvaney, who was appointed by the US president in March, admitted to concerns about recent developments, including government legislation that could unilaterally override aspects of the agreement on Northern Ireland struck with Brussels last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/sep/18/brexit-trump-envoy-warns-of-risk-of-ireland-border-by-accident

[LeftishBrit]

6. Some of the hardline Brexiteers don't like any criticism of Brexit

Iain Duncan Smith (one of our worst politicians ever) opened his big mouth about this. And the Sun criticized Biden for 'threatening' our 'newly independent' nation, though they stopped short of giving any praise or endorsement to Trump.

But it doesn't feature strongly in the UK as an issue. The Brexiteers are more preoccupied with blaming the EU and the 'Remoaners' and Nicola Sturgeon for any problem with Brexit than with attacking the Democrats. The British press at the moment is much more preoccupied with Covid, an emerging 'second wave', and with possible restrictions that may be introduced to combat it, than with the supposed sins of Biden.