Who should Brexit Britain want to win the US presidential election? Donald Trump has been rhetorically pro-Brexit. He has broken decisively with US foreign policy orthodoxy, which has long assumed that more European integration is inherently a good thing. But his words of support have delivered little in terms of practical assistance for Brexit Britain, I say in the magazine this week, Trump might have decried Barack Obama’s ‘back of the queue’ comment but his own trade representative admitted recently that no US-UK trade deal will be ready before the presidential election in November.
Trump has been a difficult ally, alienating other democracies, undercutting America’s moral leadership in the world and generating considerable uncertainty. Boris Johnson – having tried and failed to reset relations with Russia as Foreign Secretary – wants to take a tough line with Moscow, one of his arguments for bringing DfID into the Foreign Office is to ensure that more money is spent countering Russian meddling in the Western Balkans. But with Trump in the White House, the US is an unreliable ally when it comes to dealing with Russia. His desire to make some grand bargain with Putin will always have the potential to undercut any effort to support countries in Moscow’s ‘near-abroad’.
Biden – who along with his circle was very opposed to Brexit – would be a less enthusiastic ally of Brexit Britain than Trump, but he might be a more useful one. He is better suited than Trump to leading an effort by the democratic world to counter China. He also wouldn’t inflame UK public opinion in the way that the current President does. He’d make it easier for Johnson to be pro-American at home and abroad, and that is ultimately in Britain’s national interest.
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