Biden’s Cold-Shouldering of Britain Is Verging on Embarrassing

Ireland is gearing up for President Biden’s imminent visit — which will not be without some attendant disruption — but to the growing consternation of some the four-day visit will not be followed by a trip to London for the coronation of King Charles III next month. While officials on both sides of the Atlantic have attempted to downplay Mr. Biden’s decision to skip the momentous ceremonial event — First Lady Jill Biden will be dispatched to Britain for the occasion — it will round out a series of snubs that as events this week in Ireland will show could be seen as bordering on Anglophobic. It is only by dint of what Winston Churchill called the “special relationship” between America and Britain that long after Mr. Biden has left the White House the holes he is boring in that diplomatic soil will be repaired. The inattention this White House is giving to the relationship will not in the short run do much to empower Britain as it navigates a fraught post-Brexit world where the cachet of monarchy is diminishing by the day. Mr. Biden, who has an Irish heritage and has identified himself half-jokingly as Irish, apparently shares some of President Obama’s foibles in respect to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. In 2009 Mr. Obama removed a bronze bust of Britain’s wartime leader from the Oval Office. President Trump put it back, but in the first days of his presidency Mr. Biden again pulled it from display. Such pettiness straddles the line between subtle and nose-thumbing, but the President’s program in Ireland this week belies sentiment that does flirt with open antipathy to London. The fact that Britain’s Telegraph newspaper considers Mr. Biden anti-British notwithstanding, the president will be spending a disproportionate amount of his time on his Emerald Isle itinerary in the Republic of Ireland.Mr. Biden will travel first to Northern Ireland’s capital, Belfast, to mark a quarter-century of the Good Friday Agreement. He will be joined there by President Clinton, who helped negotiate the accord that put an end to the Troubles. Prime Minister Sunak will reportedly be there too.It was not immediately clear if the brevity of Mr. Biden’s sojourn in Northern Ireland was preordained by a general sense that there might be an uptick in plans to disrupt his visit — reports emerged Sunday that a dissident IRA group was planning to do just that. The very name “Belfast” is fraught with political baggage and the short presidential presence there on Tuesday is not likely to lighten the load much.Mr. Biden will also attend the opening of a new campus of the University of Belfast. He declined an invitation to speak at Stormont, the regional parliament of Northern Ireland. Once the pro forma commemoration of the Good Friday Agreement is over, Mr. Biden will swiftly make his way south to Dublin, County Louth, and County Mayo, where, according to the White House, “he will deliver an address to celebrate the deep, historic ties that link our countries and people.”As the octogenarian president moves about the Republic of Ireland with the alacrity of a leprechaun, it will raise questions about the credibility of the claim that he is “too old” to travel to Britain for the coronation of King Charles III in early May. The reality is somewhat different. President Biden’s mother, Catherine Finnegan, had so much contempt for England that she once slept on a hotel room floor instead of in a bed where Queen Elizabeth reportedly once slept. Mr. Biden and his mother were very close. After her husband died in 2002, Ms. Finnegan lived for a time with her son, Joe Robinette. Old age? Fatigue? As any world traveler knows, you can always sleep on the plane — Air Force One even has a bed for that purpose. It is possible the reason that Mr. Biden does not wish to attend the coronation next month is simply because he does not wish to do so.This is regrettable, even though no American president has ever attended the coronation of a British sovereign, because the institution of the British monarchy is under unrelenting attack and in no small part due to the unchecked woke culture which started spreading while Mr. Biden served as Mr. Obama’s vice president. A figurative slap on the new king’s back would be — perish the thought — nice. The heavy absence of an American head of state in London next month really starts this week in Ireland. One need not forsake one’s roots, nor be a full-throttled Anglophile, to be a mensch. It may take a new Oval Office occupant to put Mr. Churchill back in his place and start fixing the damage — because this is all getting to be rather embarrassing.

Biden’s Cold-Shouldering of Britain Is Verging on Embarrassing

Biden’s Cold-Shouldering of Britain Is Verging on Embarrassing

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