What a difference a month makes.
In August Joe Biden was being denounced in the British parliament for a “shameful” retreat from Afghanistan that blindsided the UK and other allies. The US president reportedly took a day and a half to return prime minister Boris Johnson’s call.
On Tuesday, by contrast, Johnson rode triumphantly into Washington on one of the Amtrak trains so beloved by Biden, celebrating both a new military pact and the lifting of a pandemic ban on British travellers visiting the US. He sat in the Oval Office and lavished praise on the president’s address to the UN general assembly.
The swing from hapless despair to giddy euphoria made for snappy headlines. But neither extreme was realistic. The relationship between the US and post-Brexit Britain, and between Biden and Johnson, remains complicated, nuanced and inevitably transactional – with further highs and lows surely still in store. » | David Smith in Washington | Wednesday, September 22, 2021
