Liz Truss will launch a charm offensive to ease American concerns about her policy on the Northern Ireland Protocol if she becomes prime minister, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Conservative leadership front-runner has vowed to protect the special relationship, but current and former UK diplomats and White House insiders say her plan to override the Brexit deal has caused disquiet in Washington.
While Ms Truss has said the first world leader she will call if she wins the leadership race will be Volodymr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, her conversation with Joe Biden, the US president, will be one of the earliest.A source close to Ms Truss said: “The US relationship is one of the most important for security, economic and cultural reasons.”
On both sides of the Atlantic, there is an expectation that Mr Biden, who is proud of his Irish American heritage, will not lose time in raising the issue of the protocol.
A former senior British diplomat told The Telegraph: “The thing that is loaded against her and is going to be difficult for her is what she has said on the Northern Ireland Protocol, especially if she now implements it.
“That’s going to be difficult with the Biden administration, and I imagine in their first phone call Biden will say: ‘Don’t do it. Try and do a deal with the EU.’”White House insider said: “For personal reasons, he [Mr Biden] is very focused on the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. But also for geopolitical reasons he does not want a situation in which the UK and EU create a diversion and damage at a time when we can least afford it.
“The policy being proposed by Liz Truss is a concerning one for folks here in Washington.”
Opinions differ on the prospects for her personal relationship with Mr Biden, with one UK diplomat saying she had struggled to hit it off with US counterparts.
“I don’t think her personality type works well with Americans, because she’s just a bit cold and brittle,” the diplomat said. “Americans like stuff to be pally.”
However, a senior former Pentagon official was more optimistic, saying: “Biden’s an old pro. This is not his first rodeo when it comes to a new leader.”
Within the UK diplomatic corps there is lingering concern about Ms Truss’s “impulsive” approach to foreign policy – something apparently underlined this week when she said “the jury’s out” on whether Emmanuel Macron, the French president, was “friend or foe”.
- The Telegraph understands Ms Truss blindsided officials earlier in the summer when she spontaneously decided to ask Turkey whether it could join Rwanda in tak
ing asylum seekers coming to Britain.
“The thing that scares me a little bit is not big changes, but the possibility of weird volatility when she gets an idea in her head that she’s fond of,” one diplomat said.
“It’s a little bit unpredictable the things that she doubles down on and the things that are just passing statements. It creates quite a lot of clearing up. It also creates this slight sense of the UK being unreliable.”