A British official will be sent to the US in a bid to forge stronger links with President Joe Biden’s new administration amid a deepening row between the UK and the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol.
The senior official from the Northern Ireland Office has been tasked with building alliances with Irish Americans specifically, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Mr Biden and his allies have previously expressed concern over Northern Ireland’s future post-Brexit, warning the US would not accept a “guarded border” on the island of Ireland and that the Good Friday peace deal must be protected.
The announcement that the official would be sent across the pond came after Irish minister for foreign affairs Simon Coveney and EU Commission chief Maroš Šefčovič briefed the influential bipartisan Friends of Ireland caucus on Capitol Hill on the UK’s unilateral action to extend protocol grace periods.
The Friends of Ireland caucus is chaired by the Massachusetts Democrat Richard Neal, who also chairs Congress’s Ways and Means committee, which has power over the US’s trade deals with foreign countries.
Meanwhile, the EU has refused to back down on its threat to take legal action against the UK over its move on the protocol. Joao Vale de Almeida, the EU’s ambassador to the UK, told ITV’s Peston programme last night the bloc would “move forward” in the coming days.