Today’s US-UK diplomacy didn’t get off to the best start, with the Times breaking the remarkable news about a US demarche — or diplomatic rebuke — to the UK government to complain about its approach to the Northern Ireland protocol. But the day has ended in a better place for the UK government.
The US-UK joint statement contains a section on Northern Ireland that is far more nuanced than the demarche. It talks about the ‘delicate balance’ of the Good Friday Agreement, which is something that the UK has been trying to stress in its discussions with the EU — arguing that unionists’ objections to the protocol in its current form risk upsetting that.
Downing Street, though, would not have wanted so much focus on the protocol today. As I say in the magazine this week, it would have preferred the focus to be on the UK and the US’s effort to rally the democratic world to deal with the new autocratic threat posed by Russia and China.
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