When David Cameron arrived at the White House on a beautiful spring day in March 2012, President Obama joshed that he was “chuffed to bits” to welcome the British prime minister to Washington. Since then there have been bumps in the road over Syria and Afghanistan, Brexit, trade, and two Cameron successors more interested in lobbing insults at friends and allies than in building good relations.
So this week’s visit by Rishi Sunak matters. Presidents Obama and Biden, and most other Democratic leaders, feared that Brexit would damage the UK, the bilateral relationship, US interests in Europe, and our international standing. For Biden, there was also a personal angle. As an Irish-American Catholic, albeit one with deep English roots, he was warning against the risk of Brexit damaging the Good Friday Agreement even before he was elected president in 2020.
