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On Sunday night, Johnson and Biden had not spoken since the result of the US election. Diplomatic sources in London said they expected Biden to call Germany’s Angela Merkel and Frenchman Emmanuel Macron to the prime minister.
Johnson, who has never met Biden, insisted that the special relationship with the United States would not change, saying: “The United States is our closest and most important ally, and that has been the case with president after president, prime minister after prime minister. “. Minister, it will not change.
“I look forward to working with President Biden and his team on many things that are crucial for us in the weeks and months ahead: addressing climate change, trade and international security.”
On Sunday night, Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Defense Select Committee, who knows Biden, said Johnson had to be “the first to clarify and offer assurances that the Good Friday Agreement will be honored.”
Ahead of a key week in the Brexit trade talks, Johnson said an EU trade deal was “to be done, the broad lines are pretty clear. We just have to get them to do it if we can.”
Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, spoke with Lord Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator, on Sunday ahead of face-to-face trade talks on Brexit in London this week.
Cabinet ministers are already lining up for a battle over how the government responds to its peers’ likely attempt to soften the Internal Markets Bill by removing contentious clauses.
A minister supporting Brexit told The Telegraph: “The Lords have a particular stance when it comes to Brexit. This is their last stand against Brexit, and only on that basis are they going to shout, shout, call out of Lords. giving again its anti-Brexit stance. At the end of the day, the government has to move on. “
Yet another who campaigned for Remain called for caution, saying he hoped the government would not rush to use the Commons to reinstate the clauses and risk violating international law.
Parliamentarians will only vote to reinstate the contentious clauses of the fifth part of the Internal Markets Bill at the end of this month, when the EU trade negotiations have finished.
The minister said: “If the negotiations go well, then it could be a sign of goodwill that we can indicate that we no longer need these clauses. Having votes this week is not much help. We are not closing the deck chairs. We need those clauses because we still we don’t have the agreement. “
