Boris Johnson faces a catastrophe in terms of future relations with Washington if he pursues a no-deal Brexit, the former head of the Foreign Office and a succession of ex-ambassadors have said.
The calls add pressure on the UK to revise its internal market bill, currently in the Lords, that includes clauses enabling the UK to breach international law and set up a hard border on the island of Ireland, a move deeply opposed by Joe Biden’s foreign policy team.
Johnson congratulated Biden on his victory on Saturday evening. But Dominic Raab said “some processes still needed to be complete” in an oblique reference to Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results in the courts. Speaking on Sky TV, the UK foreign secretary avoided answering when asked: “Do you think all votes should be counted in a democratic election?”
But overall it was a blow to Trump that his closest personal transatlantic ally had endorsed Biden’s victory before any formal concession statement from the White House.
The British endorsement followed four days of Foreign Office silence, contrasting with calls from the German foreign ministry for Trump to tone down his claims the election had been stolen.
Some of Biden’s allies – not official aides – made clear their hostility towards Johnson, regarded by certain Democrats as a shallow mini-Trump populist willing to use lies to pursue nationalist and divisive goals. After Johnson congratulated Biden, Tommy Vietor, a former Obama press aide and now a leading figure on the influential Pod Save America franchise, referred to the prime minister’s previous comments about Barack Obama’s “part-Kenyan” heritage. “This shapeshifting creep weighs in,” he tweeted. “We will never forget your racist comments about Obama and slavish devotion to Trump.”
Biden, a Catholic with strong moral views and deep foreign policy experience, is not a natural soulmate for Johnson, and the two men have never met. But Biden’s allies said he is by instinct a bridge-builder prepared to work across the aisle, suggesting he would give the UK prime minister a chance. The importance of alliances, after all, is one of Biden’s foundational principles.
Downing Street is banking on the importance of the intelligence relationship, and a close common agenda on issues ranging from the climate crisis, the Iran nuclear deal, modernising the Nato defence alliance and a continued ideological pushback against China and Russia.
Downing Street’s foreign policy chief, Prof John Bew, is also a past participant in the D10, an informal multilateral grouping of democracies that has echoes in Biden’s plans for a summit of democracies. The UK chairs the big UN climate crisis summit and G7 this year, and UK aides see opportunities for a way of meshing Biden’s summit and the concept of a D10.
No 10 will also welcome the US back into active engagement in multilateral organisations such as the World Health Organization, the World Trade Organisztion and the UN human rights council. The UK will also be hoping that the US will pledge to make any coronavirus vaccine available to all.
Figures such as the former head of M16 Sir John Sawers claim British diplomacy has been adrift around the world because of the absence of consistency and values from its first partner.
But Johnson is being urged by diplomats to recognise that pursuit of a no-deal Brexit will be regarded as a serious error by the US, and undermine this wider agenda. Sir Simon Fraser, the foreign office permanent secretary until 2015, said Biden’s rise was “problematic for our government. This is a government that was born of the disruption of Brexit in 2016 just as Trumpism was a reflection of that. Trump supported Brexit. My understanding is the relationship between London and the Biden team is not that strong.”
Speaking at Chatham House, he added: “The British government will be looking for areas where it can have influence with Washington and with Europe, and to find a role. If we have a no-deal Brexit with a Biden administration, it is going to be a catastrophe for that agenda so I hope the government realises that it redoubles the argument for some sort of deal if the UK wants to have some sort of influence … We will shoot ourselves in the foot both in Washington and Brussels and beyond Brussels if we pursue a no-deal Brexit option.”
The former UK ambassador to the US, Sir Nigel Sheinwald also said Biden regarded Brexit as a significant mistake. “After a Biden victory, and a failure to reach a trade deal with the EU, the UK would occupy a lonely place in the world,” he said. A UK-EU trade deal is seen by the Biden team as symbolic of the UK’s willingness to cooperate with rather than disrupt the EU. Only last week the EU set out proposals for how the UK and other third parties could join EU defence projects.
Johann Wadephul, deputy chair of the CDU foreign affairs group, also urged the UK to lift its sights. He said: “Great Britain has to realise that it would be good for the Brexit negotiations to be finished because the Biden administration will concentrate more on the EU, and the more we are aligned together, the better it would be better for both for the US and for Europe.”
Biden, proud of his Irish ancestral roots and close to the Irish diplomatic machine, has said any Brexit that threatened the Good Friday agreement by hardening borders within Ireland would end the chance of a UK-US bilateral trade deal.
Kori Schake, foreign policy lead at the American Enterprise Institute said Biden was anyway unlikely to see a prospective deal as a top priority. “My advice to the UK is to join the transpacific trade partnership and get what they want from the US market that way.”
The UK is also aware that the EU is preparing to offer its own partnership with the Biden team, one that risks brushing the UK to one side. The German government is likely to be Biden’s first interlocutor, according to Kim Darroch, the previous UK ambassador to the US.
Fraser said: “I expect when he is working with Europe, Biden will probably look to France and Germany. So the UK, despite our deep and instinctive relationships – which are very powerful – is going to have to work hard to forge a relationship in a new context.”
The UK’s relative influence may depend partly on whether the EU can resolve its own internal differences and make a coherent offer to the US on defence, trade and China. There will be relief across Europe according to Dominique Moïsi, special adviser to Institut Montaigne. He said: “Trump’s tactical bullying will be replaced by strategic empathy – the natural style of Biden.”
But many in Europe believe the US has fundamentally changed in the past decade, shown by the record turnout for Trump last Tuesday, and as a result the foundations of the old transatlantic alliance is dead.
Benjamin Haddad, director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said: “To European leaders who still question European strategic autonomy [the ability to act alone if necessary], do you really believe the decision of a few thousand voters in Pennsylvania should decide the security of your citizens every four years?”
Others, especially in Germany, believe the US alliance remains indispensable to Europe, and autonomy is a pipe dream.
The German foreign ministry immediately issued a statement saying it planned to make an offer to revive the transatlantic partnership and would put forward concrete proposals on “how we can close ranks as an international community be it with regard to players such as China climate change protection and the global fight against Covid-19”.
Germany will be pressing for Biden to lift tariffs on steel and cars as a symbol of a new start, but Biden will be wary. Although US public attitudes to trade liberalisation are changing, his industrial and trade platform “Made in America” has superficial echoes of Trump’s “America First”.
But the biggest test of transatlantic relations is likely to come over China. Through the use of extraterritorial sanctions and regulations, Trump bullied most of Europe into ejecting the Chinese government-backed Huawei from its 5G networks. But there was always a fear that any moment the US president might turn on a dime, seal a bilateral trade deal with Xi Jinping and ditch his purely performative concern about human rights in Hong Kong, Britain’s old colony.
Fraser describes the rise of China as the greatest collective strategic challenge facing the alliance, an issue that requires greater clarity from the US. He argues European trade officials would like nothing more than to work with the US on a policy towards China in the WTO, but cooperation is made near impossible by the US slapping tariffs on Europe.
He says the UK is also not yet in a position “to balance out the tremendous geopolitical strategic risks of China with the economic opportunity and imperative to engage with China. We do not have the policy mechanism to work that through.”
But constructing any policy mechanism in any field was always an act of faith in the Trump era. His thinking – “like an archipelago of dots” according to John Bolton, his former national security adviser – meant any policy was near impossible to create, or discern. With the return of the foreign policy professionals to the US Department of State, the UK at least has some adults with whom to converse.
