When he first ran for the White House in 1987, Joe Biden’s candidacy was destroyed by a plagiarism dispute. But the British politician whose words he raised has paid a warm tribute to the newly elected president of the United States.
Neil Kinnock, the former leader of Britain’s main opposition Labor party, told AFP that Biden’s qualities include “wise and adult calm, and that will guarantee great service to America and indeed the world.”
“You have a tremendously difficult task in the current crisis conditions,” Kinnock, who also served on the European Union’s executive commission, said in an email.
“But he’s a really tough guy, and it shows because he just keeps going with the job and doesn’t boastfully proclaim his toughness continually as the last guy, what’s his name?”
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Biden, then a senator, was a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination before the 1988 presidential election.
But during the 1987 campaign, he was forced to step down after it emerged that he had largely borrowed, without attribution, a speech delivered earlier that year by Kinnock as a Labor leader.
Kinnock recalled his last meeting with Biden, in the Democratic Senate office, in 2007.
According to the email, Biden mockingly introduced the Welshman to his staff with the words, “Folks, meet my best speechwriter, Neil Kinnock!”
During that 2007 visit to Washington, Kinnock said they later met for a “nice dinner” and Biden told him that a promising senator named Barack Obama would likely become the next Democratic president.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t make a bet,” said Kinnock, who was invited by Biden to attend Obama’s inauguration in 2009 when Biden became vice president.
Experts on both sides of the Atlantic have predicted that the Biden White House will be less friendly to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson than his populist colleague Donald Trump.
Kinnock said that Biden would “reestablish a relationship of mutual trust with the EU, value a civil partnership with the UK without being effusive, and show firmness in dealings with China.”
He added that Russian President Vladimir “Putin, meanwhile, shouldn’t expect a nice Christmas card” from Biden.
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