Joe Biden’s trip to Belfast was seen in government as a chance to strengthen the special relationship. The initial hope had been that by the time the US President jetted to Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, power-sharing would have returned to Stormont. However, after the DUP voted against Rishi Sunak’s renegotiation of the Northern Ireland Protocol, Biden instead used his speech in Belfast to praise the Windsor Framework and express his ‘hope’ that ‘the assembly and executive will soon be restored’.
Such words from the US President – who often speaks of his Irish heritage with pride – were given short shrift by the DUP, with the party’s leader Jeffrey Donaldson telling reporters that the visit had failed to ‘change the political dynamic in Northern Ireland’. The president is now in the Republic of Ireland for the next few days – addressing the Irish parliament and embarking on a tour of his ‘ancestral’ home with his son Hunter.
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