Assessing the Biden-Johnson Working Relationship

MARK LANDLER, “THE NEW YORK TIMES”: Well, Bianna, as you point out, these are not two leaders who know each other well. It’s the first time they have had a face-to-face meeting, which is interesting, given how long both of them have been in the public eye. And, as you say, they’re philosophically from very different places. Boris Johnson is the face of Brexit. And Joe Biden is on record as saying he thinks Brexit was a very bad idea. On Northern Ireland, there’s a potential real point of disagreement between the two of them, because Brexit has proven very disruptive in the north, as you said. And Joe Biden was expected to and I think was likely to have said to Boris Johnson today, whatever you do on Brexit, it can’t undermine the Good Friday Agreement. This is the agreement that was brokered with the help of President Bill Clinton back in 1998. And it has a great deal of meaning in the Democratic Party and among prominent Democrats in the U.S., including Nancy Pelosi. So, Boris Johnson needs to watch very carefully how he handles this — this very difficult negotiation he’s in with the European Union. He doesn’t want to undermine his relationship with the United States. The two leaders looked like they were putting the best possible face on things today, as you suggested, but these pesky issues could really come between them, particularly if the negotiations on Northern Ireland go badly, which, at the moment, it looks as if they are.

GOLODRYGA: And so, Tom, let’s pick up on that, because this clearly is an issue very important to President Biden and other members of Congress in the United States, including Nancy Pelosi, as Mark just said. But in terms of the U.K. approach, and Boris Johnson, in that piece that you wrote about him, he was negative about how Brexit is characterized in the United States among publications, among journalists, among politicians. What is his stance on the Northern Ireland issue in particular?

TOM MCTAGUE, “THE ATLANTIC”: Well, he sees Britain’s position over Northern Ireland as he inherited a problem, that it was a kind of devil’s bargain. Either way he turned, it was going to be a problem, and he accepted sort of the least worst option. And what that has happened — what has happened, in his view, is it has created a problem among British unionists who live in Northern Ireland. They are furious that a border, a trade border has been erected between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The only alternative, though, is a kind of border between Northern Ireland and the republic, which infuriates the other half of Northern Ireland. So he’s in a rock and a hard place. And he has signed a legally binding international agreement that erects that trade border, but within his own country. So, he’s trapped. And he is trying to unpick something that he himself has done. And President Biden is saying, hang on there.