Up to Joe Biden whether he wants bust of Churchill in Oval Office, says Boris Johnson

Image of wartime leader has made way for heroes of civil rights era

Joe Biden walks past solar panels while touring the Plymouth Area Renewable Energy Initiative in New Hampshire (REUTERS)

Boris Johnson has sought to sidestep a diplomatic row with Joe Biden, by saying that it is up to the new US president whether he wishes to keep a bust of Sir Winston Churchill in the Oval Office.

The prime minister’s position stands in stark contrast to his suggestion that Barack Obama’s earlier removal of the bust in 2016 was “a snub to Britain” which might be prompted by the “part-Kenyan” president’s ancestral dislike of the empire.

Obama said then that he had moved the head-and-shoulders statue to make room for another of Martin Luther King, but that he had a second bust of the wartime leader elsewhere in the White House.

The Churchill bust, loaned to the White House by the UK government in 2001, was restored to its place by Donald Trump.

But Mr Biden risked hurting British feelings by again having it taken out of his office, which now contains busts of civil rights heroes King, Robert Kennedy, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez, as well as former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

According to the Washington Post, Mr Biden has also decorated the office with a large portrait of former President Franklin D Roosevelt and paintings of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington.

Asked whether Mr Johnson objected to Churchill’s absence, his official spokesman told a daily Westminster press briefing: “The Oval Office is the president’s private office and it is up to the president to decorate it as he wishes.”

Joe Biden has installed a bust of Rosa Parks in the Oval Office (AP)

When the removal of the bust was first noticed in 2016, Mr Johnson - then leading the Leave campaign in the EU referendum - was quick to seize on it as a way of undermining Mr Obama’s expressions of support for the UK’s EU membership.

In a newspaper column, Mr Johnson wrote: “Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President’s ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender.”