Don’t lecture us, Joe! Tories hit back after Biden’s trade rebuke
DOWNING Street has hit back at Joe Biden after he savaged Boris Johnson over Brexit – suggesting he did not understand the Prime Minister’s plans.
On Wednesday night, the US presidential hopeful warned that any future US-UK trade deal ‘must be contingent on respect’ for the Good Friday Agreement.
Conservative MPs lined up to condemn the Democrat candidate for seeking to ‘lecture’ Britain over Northern Ireland.
Asked if Mr Biden was wrong, the No 10 spokesman said: ‘We will continue to work with our US partners to ensure our position is understood, but the whole point of this – as the Prime Minister has set out – is to make sure the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement is upheld.’
After Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab sought to put Britain’s case to senior US politicians, Mr Biden tweeted: ‘We can’t allow the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland to become a casualty of Brexit.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘We don’t need lectures on the Northern Ireland peace deal from Mr Biden.
‘If I were him I would worry more about the need for a peace deal in the US to stop the killing and rioting before lecturing other sovereign nations.’
David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, added: ‘Perhaps Mr Biden should talk to the EU since the only threat of an invisible border in Ireland would be if they insisted on levying tariffs.’
Labour’s foreign spokesman Lisa Nandy said Mr Biden’s rebuke ‘shows the scale of the damage the Government have done to Britain’s standing in the world’.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Brexit could not be allowed to ‘imperil’ peace in Northern Ireland.