Joe Biden has repeatedly said how important his Irish roots are to him. Presidential candidates have long sought to appeal to the considerable Irish–American base and the President meets the Taoiseach every year in Washington for St Patrick’s Day, signalling the strong Irish network in Capitol Hill. In January this year, after a reporter asked for a comment for the BBC, Biden quipped “I’m Irish” before flashing a smile.
During the campaign in September, he made clear his unequivocal support for maintaining and protecting the Good Friday Agreement, tweeting: “We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit. Any trade deal between the U.S. and U.K. must be contingent upon respect for the Agreement and prevent the return of a hard border. Period.” This contrasts to President Trump, who spoke in favour of Brexit and appeared to have a warm relationship with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson and Joe Biden have yet to meet in person.
Biden’s tweet came after Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, warned that the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives would not permit any trade deal if Brexit undermined the Agreement. The comments were made in the context of the UK government’s Internal Market Bill, which has been criticised by the European Commission and the Irish Government as a potential breach of the Withdrawal Agreement. The UK government say that the Bill protects the Agreement and an open border between Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Multilateralism
Biden’s support for multilateralism and the alliances that historically underpin American foreign policy – NATO, the World Trade Organisation, the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN) – will mark a foreign policy shift from his predecessor. His support for the EU and UN will be welcome for the Irish government, particularly as Ireland will begin a two–year mandate as part of the UN Security Council in January 2021. Biden has pledged to rejoin the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organisation, after President Trump ended US membership. Taoiseach Micheál Martin and President Michael D. Higgins sent their congratulations to the President–Elect and Vice President Elect Kamala Harris shortly after it was projected they were on course for victory.
Biden is the second Catholic president after John F. Kennedy and like many office holders before him has ancestors from Ireland. He is the descendant of Edward Blewitt, originally from Ballina, Co. Mayo, an engineer who died in Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1872 – the town where Biden was born 70 years later. Another branch of his family came from County Louth. Biden visited both Mayo and Louth while Vice President in 2016 and has since returned.
The Vice President–Elect is Kamala Harris, Senator for California, who will be the first woman to hold the office and the first from both a black and South Asian background. In her speech after the result, she declared that “While I may be the first woman in this office, I will not be the last.” Harris wore white in reference to the suffragette movement and 100 years after American women won the right to vote across the country.
Harris initially competed against Biden for the Democratic nominee, but now they form the incoming presidential partnership ahead of formally taking office in January 2021. The UK government will wait to assess if Biden’s criticism of the Internal Market Bill and the future security of the Good Friday Agreement becomes critical in the context of any future UK/US post–Brexit trading relationship.