U.K. PM JOHNSON PLAYS DOWN REMOVAL OF CHURCHILL BUST

Downing Street has played down fears over the future of the special relationship after Joe Biden removed the bust of Sir Winston Churchill from the Oval Office as one of his first acts as u.s. president. The Prime Minister’s spokesman insisted it was up to Biden to decorate his office as “he wishes.” The Sir Jacob Epstein bronze was originally lent to George W. Bush by Tony Blair, but was replaced by Barack Obama in 2009 with a sculpture of Martin Luther King Jr. It was returned to the British embassy. Johnson, then the mayor of London, wrote in 2016 that it had been interpreted as a “snub to Britain” and “a symbol of the part-kenyan president’s ancestral dislike of the British Empire.” The Churchill bust was reinstalled a year later by donald Trump.