Biden’s flying visit to N.Ireland not a snub says UK

President Joe Biden is spending only one night in Northern Ireland and limiting his meetings with UK and local leaders to a minimum, before he goes on a nostalgia trip to his ancestral homeland.

But Downing Street denies any snub. 

Unabashedly touting his Irish-American roots ahead of a likely reelection run, the president is according Prime Minister Rishi Sunak a mere “bi-latte” coffee meeting rather than a full bilateral in Belfast, according to a US official quoted by the New York Times.

The Democrat is also skipping next month’s coronation of King Charles III, dispatching First Lady Jill Biden in his place.

But Downing Street points to a recent political summit in California and Biden’s acceptance of Charles’s invitation to pay a state visit, as proof that the transatlantic relationship is alive and well, even if UK officials balk at calling it “special” anymore.

“You’ve seen the president’s actions during his time demonstrate that we have a close relationship,” Sunak’s spokesman told reporters on Tuesday. 

He noted that as president, Biden’s first visit outside North America was to the UK. 

“We continue to have an incredibly positive working relationship with the president and the US government.”

Nevertheless, the Biden administration has been widely seen as keeping London at arm’s length as the UK struggles to carve out a new role since quitting the European Union. 

The UK’s hopes for a post-Brexit US free trade deal appear dead for now, with the government settling for lower-grade agreements with individual US states that are of more symbolic than commercial value.

The White House made little effort to hide its frustration at the name-calling and brinkmanship that characterised London’s dealings with Brussels under Sunak’s predecessor, Boris Johnson.

Sunak appears to have turned the page on the UK’s relations with the EU by forging a new pact on post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, called the Windsor Framework.

But the territory’s biggest pro-UK party refuses still to end its more than year-long boycott of the local government in the Stormont assembly.

Before delivering a speech in Belfast Wednesday, Biden is expected to meet briefly with the leaders of the Democratic Unionist Party and others including the nationalist Sinn Fein, which wants reunification with the Republic of Ireland.

On leaving Washington, Biden said his main focus in Belfast was ensuring the Good Friday peace agreement and Windsor Framework “stay in place”. 

“Keep the peace. That’s the main thing,” he told reporters.

US political support was key to the peace agreement that ended the three-decade-long “Troubles” in Northern Ireland in April 1998.

But while Bill Clinton worked the phones to help secure the peace deal in 1998, Biden is viewed with distrust by Northern Ireland’s pro-UK politicians given his invocations of his Irish heritage.

Twenty-five years on, UK and some Northern Irish leaders hope for an infusion of US economic support to safeguard the peace through investment, even if Stormont’s power-sharing government remains in paralysis.

Sectarian strife has not gone away. Ahead of Biden’s trip, masked youths hurled petrol bombs and fireworks at police during an unauthorised nationalist parade in Londonderry/Derry, where the Troubles began in the 1960s.

But the president’s delegation — which includes Joe Kennedy, his newly appointed envoy for Northern Irish economic affairs — will also see the fruits of the peace agreement.

Biden’s five-star hotel in Belfast only opened in 2018, part of a wave of redevelopment that has transformed the city centre after its tragic recent past.

Before 1998, the only place for visiting dignitaries to stay was the nearby Europa, which was attacked so often by the Irish Republican Army paramilitary group that it became known as the most bombed hotel in Europe.

Chris Heaton-Harris, Sunak’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, denied that the short duration of Biden’s visit was a missed opportunity.

“I know he also wants to visit other things in Ireland and family,” he said.

“But let’s make the most of his visit and make it a really positive event on the trajectory of Northern Ireland’s continued peace, stability, and actually prosperity as well.”