‘Anti-British’ Joe Biden Won’t Make Us Abandon Pro-Brexit Boycott, Says Northern Ireland’s DUP

US President Joe Biden speaks to members of the media before boarding Marine One on the So
Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

America’s ‘anti-British’ President Joe Biden will not be able to force the Democratic Unionist Party to abandon its pro-Brexit principles and rejoin power sharing, the party has declared.

President Joe Biden will be unable to convince the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to abandon its boycott of Northern Ireland’s devolved parliament, senior officials within the group have declared.

Starting in 2022, the DUP boycott of the local parliament in Belfast has prevented any government whatsoever from being formed in the region, with the Good Friday Agreement ensuring peace in the violence-prone north requiring the party’s involvement in any ruling administration. The UK home nation of Northern Ireland has been run directly from London instead.

The boycott was sparked by existential issues the DUP has with current post-Brexit arrangements in Northern Ireland, with the pro-United Kingdom party worried that continued EU influence in the region will eventually split it off from the rest of the country.

According to a report by The Telegraph, party leaders have now insisted that any attempts by President Biden to change this during his Ireland visit will be rebuffed, with Unionists seeing the commander-in-chief as a pro-Irish Republican Catholic hell-bent on seeing the UK broken up.

“He’s anti-British. He is pro-Republican and he has made his antipathy towards Protestants in particular very well known,” DUP MP Sammy Wilson remarked, criticising the President as wanting to see the separated region returned to the Irish state, which gained independence from the UK over 100 years ago.

The DUP’s belief that Biden is a raging pro-Republican Irish Nationalist is not without evidence.

Biden’s current trip to Ireland will see him spend one day in the North, but four days in the independent south, which, post-Brexit, remains a fully-fledged member of the European Union.

Despite this major visit to the island, Biden has refused to travel to the UK for just one day to attend the coronation of King Charles III, something that has been viewed as a snub by those loyal to UK and the British crown in Northern Ireland.

The 46th President also has not been shy about expressing his disdain — even jokingly — for “the Brits“, repeatedly making jibes against the UK both before and during his current presidency

Lots of this ethnic animosity — regardless of how real it actually is — can be traced back to the President’s particular kind of Irish heritage, with a number of his ancestors fleeing to America in the 19th century in order to escape Ireland’s deadly potato famine. Less is made of Biden’s English ancestry, which saw third-great-grandfather William Biden move to Maryland from West Sussex, England around 1820.

To this day, many with Irish heritage blame this event on both the actions and inaction of British authorities, who were in control of the island at the time of the mass starvation event.

“Biden is irredeemably partisan,” another unionist politician, TUV leader Jim Allister, remarked, complaining about the amount of money taxpayers were spending on the visit.

“His continuing stance is anti-British and anti-Unionist,” he argued. “With our public finances severely stretched, we could well do without squandering £7m on security for him.”

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