President Biden faces a difficult task smoothing over wrinkles in his relationship with the UK as infighting continues to plague the ruling Conservative Party and as the country\u2019s traditionally impartial bureaucracy appears to weigh in on affairs, according to experts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cJoe Biden has been the most anti-British US president of the modern era,\u201d Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital. \u201cHe has treated the British people, the United Kingdom, with tremendous disdain, from sinking a US-UK trade agreement through to his refusal to attend the coronation of King Charles.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden arrived Sunday night in Britain ahead of a critical NATO summit this week, with the bloc looking to firm up the details and commitments for a new Ukraine support package and the establishment of a NATO-Ukraine council.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The visit marks the first time Biden has visited since King Charles III took the throne, with Biden famously not attending the coronation on May 6. Biden made sure to call Charles ahead of the event to congratulate him, and the king invited him for a state visit after the coronation, but many Brits still interpreted the move as a snub.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some hold the view that Biden does not have particular fondness for the UK, a position born from his\u00a0strong connection to his Irish roots\u00a0and the difficulties that have persisted between the Republic of Ireland and Britain.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That age-old friction is just one speed bump among many, according to Gardiner, who also cited Biden\u2019s \u201cintense anti-Brexit \u2026 very pro-EU\u201d stance and awkwardness around the administration\u2019s interference in the NATO secretary-general nominations to oppose Britain\u2019s pick of Ben Wallace, currently the UK\u2019s secretary of state for defense. Wallace stood as favorite for the position, but failure to secure US support ended his hopes, The Telegraph reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThat\u2019s caused a lot of unhappiness in London,\u201d Gardiner noted. \u201cThat\u2019s happened just ahead of his visit to the UK, and that has generated a lot of bad advance publicity, I think, for Joe Biden ahead of his trip.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd if you add onto that the reality that Biden and his administration are basically backing\u00a0Ursula von der Leyen, the European Union Commission president, to be the next head of NATO, that\u2019s seen as very insulting, of course, by the British,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alan Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, told Fox News Digital that despite these tensions, Biden\u2019s visit has a chance to \u201ccement the burgeoning relationship between the two leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t expect any grand announcements to arise given the substantive discussions that already occurred last month, but the volume of conversations in recent months \u2013 and the addition of a meeting with the king this time \u2013 underscores an awareness that both countries would do well to work more closely together,\u201d Mendoza said. \u201cThe UK-US alliance remains pivotal to the future of the free world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden arrives amid a difficult situation in the UK, which may limit the impact and value of his trip, as British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak faces something of a mini-revolt in his party and a lack of support: He scored negative approval ratings among his party for the first time since taking office in October, notching a -2.7% after a decent 11.7% last month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His approval in the traditional \u201cBlue Wall\u201d conservative stronghold region in southern England dropped to -8%, according to a Telegraph report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sunak\u2019s approval has suffered partly due to continued drama surrounding Boris Johnson\u2019s exit not only from the role of prime minister last year but his role as a member of Parliament as well. Johnson and several other long-serving party members resigned their seats, with some suggesting they were pushed out from within. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI would say that there are deep internal divisions within the British Conservative Party and a lot of unhappiness within the grassroots of the Conservative Party over the current leadership, which they see as shifting the Conservative Party to the left,\u201d Gardiner said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAlso in the background you have down to the efforts by the Civil Service to undermine key aspects of government policy,\u201d he added, citing the government\u2019s inability to tighten immigration law to deal with the \u201csmall boat crisis,\u201d which he claimed the Civil Service has opposed and worked to \u201cupend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo, certainly in the UK, I would say it is not easy for the British government to push through strong, robust conservative policies because you have a Civil Service in place that is very opposed to much of the government\u2019s agenda.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Civil Service has come under great scrutiny after Sue Gray, the civil servant charged with heading up the independent investigation into\u00a0Boris Johnson and his \u201cpartygate\u201d COVID-19 scandal, accepted a role as the chief of staff to the leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer \u2013 subject to approval from the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. Starmer led the left-wing Labour party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Johnson wrote in a statement following the release of Gray\u2019s report that he was \u201cbeing forced out by a tiny handful of people, with no evidence to back up their assertions, and without approval even of Conservative party members let alone the wider electorate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere have long been suspicions that civil servants of a differing political view have been able to stymie the efforts of this government to enact its preferred legislative agenda by throwing up procedural roadblocks along the way,\u201d Mendoza said.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe furor over a senior civil servant like Sue Gray negotiating a job offer with the Labour Party while still a serving public servant is just the latest example of the sense that the Civil Service\u2019s traditional neutrality may have been eroded,\u201d he said. \u201cThe net effect has been to see an Americanization of our system with an increase in political appointees as special advisers to ministers, helping them shepherd ideas through the Whitehall quagmire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden plans to meet with King Charles III and Sunak on Monday before departing to Vilnius, Lithuania, for the NATO summit on Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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