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This week Joe Biden is swanning around Ireland in what must be, according to his Irish-American fantasies, the climax of his foreign policy agenda. As part of his trip he is due to spend only half a day in Belfast, before dedicating two and a half days to Ireland.
While most US presidents pride themselves on being “American as apple pie,” Biden identifies as “Irish as Paddy’s pig.” There are some in America, where those of Irish descent are a significant demographic, who find this quaint. But indulging his distant inherited grievance at the cost of a strong relationship with Britain, our most stalwart of allies, is pernicious and self-indulgent.
For Biden, Britain-hatred seems to be both personal and politically convenient
Joe Biden’s cognitive challenges are now overwhelmingly apparent to anyone not deliberately overlooking them. But his deep-seated animosity for mother England — to whom we Yanks owe everything for setting the foundations of the globe’s once most successful and freest democracy — well predates the onset of this. And his animosity is troubling beyond measure at a time when western values are being assailed by autocracies around the world.
For Biden, Britain-hatred seems to have been both personal and politically convenient. Raised in blue-collar, heavily Irish Scranton Pennsylvania among his mother’s family, the Finnegans, and schooled by nuns at Catholic school, Biden was steeped in the exaggerated but dated folklore of Irish grudge. It then suited his local political rise to push the Irish persona, playing off the popular and political esteem for the Kennedys, even as that family left any anti-British grievances behind.
Highly visible during the Troubles, then-Senator Biden displayed staunch solidarity with the terrorist Republican cause. In 1985, he opposed British rule in Northern Ireland — even though it was and remains supported by a majority of people living there — and worked assiduously to oppose an extradition treaty with Britain that would have affected members of the Irish Republican Army who had fled to the United States.
In this, sadly, Biden has been far from a complete outlier in Democratic circles. Bill Clinton extended travel visas to Gerry Adams. And Massachusetts congressman Richard Neal, a leading Democrat champion of the Irish Republican cause, has long worked closely with American Friends of Sinn Féin. Neal, along with former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, all have been happy to validate Sinn Féin’s treachery.
Is this the reason that Biden decided not to attend the coronation? Even if you may quietly be glad that his absence only enhances the dignity of the occasion, on a nation to nation basis it is difficult to process the disrespect to our closest ally on this most historic and cherished occasion.
This is not the first time Britain has been snubbed by Biden. On these pages, I have expressed American indignation over the appalling treatment of Britain in the course of Biden’s deadly and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which Biden gave no advance notice to our number one fighting partner and refused even to take Boris Johnson’s urgent telephone calls about the matter.
On the world stage, Biden serially offends not just the UK but other erstwhile friends, empowering enemies without breaking a sweat, driving friendly powers into the arms of autocratic rivals. But his treatment of the UK really does exemplify the stupidity and pettiness of his foreign policy.
It must be said that much of America is staunchly pro-British. While the foundation story of the United States on this side of the Atlantic has it that our freedoms were formed fully by the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the better educated realize that free speech, habeas corpus, representative government and so much else, were derived in a much longer process running from Magna Carta through to the 1689 Bill of Rights. Even many Americans who don’t have this understanding still instinctively have a deep appreciation for our cultural, linguistic and war-fighting links. Certainly, many of us deeply admire the towering leadership, achievements and example of that great Anglo-American Winston Churchill. So why is it that Biden and so many in his Democratic Party are so hostile to Britain?
The Democrats’ Ireland posture would be bad enough in isolation toward a country of lesser significance to the US than the UK. But the bias and Britain-bashing of their foreign policy is alarmingly contrary to the best interests of the US.
Much has been made of the fact that the Special Relationship has become diminished over the years. Yet with global adversaries like Russia and China unleashed, a British-American alliance of like-minded nations dedicated to rule of law and essential freedoms is more important than ever. For what it is worth, unlike our shameful President Biden, I will cross the Atlantic in early May to celebrate the King, his glorious nation and the Anglosphere.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
