Biden told to mind his own business on Brexit

Potential Republican candidate Nikki Haley says America has no right to interfere in UK’S affairs

NIKKI HALEY, the potential Republican presidential candidate, has warned that Brexit is none of Joe Biden’s business, and that he should not weigh in on the future of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Mrs Haley, in a speech in London, lambasted Democrats in the US for trying to undermine Britain’s attempts to overhaul the Protocol.

The comments by Donald Trump’s former ambassador to the UN came after allies of Mr Biden, including House speaker Nancy Pelosi, threatened there would be no US-UK trade deal as a result.

Mrs Haley told the Policy Exchange think tank: “In terms of the Northern Ireland Protocol, I know that some of the politicians in America have decided to weigh in on that. “It’s none of their business. This is something that you have to decide; this is something that has to be in the best interest of your people, and you’ve got to decide what’s going to make you strong in the end. I just don’t think it’s our place to be weighing in on this at all.”

The former governor of South Carolina said she supported Brexit and watched it unfold with “bated breath because I love when people use the power of their voice”.

She added: “The fact that [the British people] wanted to leave the EU, I don’t blame them. I saw at the United Nations what the EU does. It makes all these countries do what they want them to do and not what’s in their best interest.”

She predicted other countries might “do the same thing, and I actually think that will make the West stronger”.

Mrs Haley, 50, is widely seen as a potential Republican nominee for president in 2024.

However, she has said that if Mr Trump decides to run, then she will not.

In a withering assessment of Mr Biden, she blamed his chaotic withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan for the invasion of Ukraine. She said: “It pains me to say that, but if there had been no Afghanistan disaster, there would likely have been no Ukraine invasion.

“Putin saw our lack of resolve in Kabul and assumed nothing meaningful would happen once his tanks rolled into Kyiv.”

She added: “A large part of Putin’s miscalculations sprung from America’s surrender in Afghanistan last summer.”

Mrs Haley also accused Mr Biden and Barack Obama of “appeasement” following the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014. The Kremlin had interpreted Mr Biden’s actions, including giving a green light to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and slowing down military aid to Ukraine, as an “invitation to evil”, she said.

She added that Europe had been “too bureaucratic and soft” to stop it.

Mrs Haley identified China as the biggest national security threat the world faces, and said deterring war in East Asia must be the “overriding goal”.

She said it would take the “sort of leadership” shown by Baroness Thatcher, who had been an inspiration throughout her own career.