If Rishi Sunak wants for boosts in trying domestic circumstances, he relishes his moments on the international stage. Yesterday it was tea in the Downing Street garden with President Biden: the sixth encounter between the two men virtually or at summits. Biden visits are nervous affairs — the stiffness of gait, rictus smile and reading from a cue-card list of their previous meetings, as if reciting the Oval Office shopping list, has an edgy feel. A meeting with the King in the evening at Windsor went more warmly. The monarch is a passionate advocate of action on climate change and Biden is keen to display his green credentials.
If the transatlantic relationship has often been declared to be a mere comfort blanket for British self-importance, the truth is that there is more interdependence at stake now. The war in Ukraine and chaos in Russia for two, while relations with other states hostile to the liberal democratic order, including China and Iran, become more testy. That has brought the “rock solid” relations Biden cited back to centre stage. But it is a dating pattern that is non-exclusive. The US wants different things from different allies. From France, it seeks a channel to engage China in efforts to hasten the end of the war in Ukraine (the practicalities of that one are more scant than the grand strategy).
From Germany (via Ursula von der Leyen, now the EU Commission president), the US seeks a conduit for US-European relations and possibly, a female face for Nato to modernise the boys’-club feeling. Britain, however, is the staunchest ally of the bloc in practical battlefield support and intelligence. The question is what the UK can hope to secure in return. Sunak sidestepped the question of US cluster-bomb exports to Ukraine for use on the battlefield, as the US cited “legal” differences (the UK is a signatory to the Oslo accord which seeks to end the use of “bomblets” ).
This is a dating pattern that is non-exclusive — the US wants different things from different allies
In truth it would be far better for the US not to be in a position with depleted weapons stockpiles so it could avoid sending cluster bombs. But that is not the case and Volodymyr Zelensky needs high-impact conventional weapons to sustain a sluggish counter-offensive. So Sunak’s position has been to stick to the protocol commitment not to manufacture or send such weapons, while side-stepping criticism of its US ally for doing the opposite.
The blunt question is what the quid pro quo is for the UK here. Hopes of a “big, bold post-Brexit trade deal” rapidly proved to be a fantasy, for which a few state-level deals are no substitute. Sunak has dropped the waffle on this and let loose his inner Silicon Valley enthusiasm to propose a larger role for the UK instead as regulator of AI, on grounds of alignment with the US in seeing risks alongside opportunities.
The mounting awareness of the vast problem-solving potential of AI, matched with concerns about misuse or uncontrolled outcomes, lead the PM to sound bullish about the UK acting as an honest broker for a new governance system.
The glaring omission is that neither attempts to extract trade favours, nor the latest AI courtship, have resulted in anything so basic as an American “Yes”. And the UK’s Nato candidate Ben Wallace was elbowed aside, possibly deemed too bullish in his all-out approach to Ukraine.
One affinity is also as much about signalling unity in the face of a threatened return of Donald Trump, who preached friendship but saw the UK mainly as a stage for his own dramatic antics. In fairness to Biden, that is not his playbook: the only departure from protocol was the President talking for too long to a soldier in his bearskin hat about how heavy it was to wear. Of such homely courtesies are affable visits made.
But as Air Force One left for the Nato Nordic meeting, the question hanging in the vapour trails is quite what is in all this for the UK in measurable terms?
Unless Sunak can boast some breakthough soon, the message behind the smiles and cue cards might just as well be on sale in an Oxford Street gift shop: “My friend visited from DC. And all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
