Sunak’s first visit to see Biden is more a clash than a meeting of minds

For all the warm handshakes and the platitudes, the president and PM are not on the same page on the economy or AI, writes Andrew Grice

The joke in Whitehall is: if you want to know Sunak’s instinct on a foreign policy issue, he will be on the same page as Washington (PA)

When Rishi Sunak meets Joe Biden tomorrow during his first visit to the White House as prime minister, the two leaders will have plenty of common ground. But that won’t prevent nervousness on the UK side.

Although such meetings are carefully choreographed, things can always go wrong. British officials know from bitter experience that one tiny misstep or minor disagreement will be magnified by the media into a headline-grabbing gaffe, bitter row – or, worse still, a presidential snub.

I’ve covered prime ministers on their foreign travels since Margaret Thatcher’s time. Their talks with a US president matter to them more than any other. US officials sometimes roll their eyes as they preserve the fiction of the “special relationship”; it has become a very uneven one in which the UK is viewed as a needy elderly relative whose best days have long passed.