Biden: Real Purpose of Ireland Trip was to Push Around the UK

US President Joe Biden speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D
Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Peter Caddle

Joe Biden has admitted that his five-day trip to Ireland last month was to put pressure on the UK government.

A trip to Ireland by President Joe Biden last month was aimed at pressuring the UK government on the issue of Northern Ireland.

Biden’s five-day stint touring the entire island of Ireland last month raised eyebrows, with the President spending longer on the island than in any other single country on foreign trips during his presidency that did not involve an international summit.

Even stranger was that, despite this long trip, Biden then refused to attend the coronation of King Charles III which occurred only a matter of weeks later, a move that was perceived as a slight against Britain.

Tensions were only made worse by Biden’s own associations, with the U.S. President repeatedly and openly siding with Irish nationalism, being perceived as supporting a move to see Northern Ireland taken out of the UK and reunited with the rest of Ireland, which is a fully independent country.

According to a report by the Irish Independent, it now appears that there is some credence to the snub theory, with Biden admitting on Wednesday at a New York fundraiser that the purpose of the trip was to put pressure on the UK over its actions in Northern Ireland, a region currently under the control of Westminster.

In particular, the President reportedly said that he travelled to the island in order to make sure “the Brits didn’t screw around” in terms of their commitments in the region.

Although not elaborated on, multiple publications have speculated that Biden’s comments are in relation to post-Brexit tensions in the region, as well as a recent UK push to have the Northern Ireland Protocol with the EU reworked due to various problems with the original agreement.

Initially agreed to by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the protocol resulted in numerous problems with internal UK trade in the region, with the deal preventing both individuals and companies from purchasing goods from England, Wales and Scotland despite the area ostensibly sharing a common market with the nations in Britain.

Britain’s current Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, now claims that many of these problems have now been alleviated with the new Windsor Framework he has brokered between the UK and the EU, though pro-UK Unionists — many of whom felt abandoned by the original EU-UK agreement — still have not said whether or not they are truly satisfied by this new solution.

Watching this play out is the Democratic government of the United States, which has repeatedly threatened to intervene if the UK acts in a way that they see as jeopardising the Good Friday Agreement, a deal between pro-Irish Republicans and Pro-UK Unionists in the late 90s that ended decades of sectarian violence in the region.

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