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Jan 12, 2024

Unionists angry as Joe Biden says he visited Northern Ireland to ‘make sure the Brits didn’t screw around’

DUP MP Sammy Wilson calls on US president to ‘show us some respect’ after Biden

DUP MP Sammy Wilson calls on US president to ‘show us some respect’ after Biden says he wanted to ensure UK kept its Good Friday commitments

An MP from Northern Ireland's biggest pro-UK party has condemned Joe Biden after the US president made contentious remarks about his recent visit to the territory.

Biden said the purpose of his trip last month was "to make sure … the Brits didn't screw around" with peace in Northern Ireland, and "didn't walk away from their commitments".

The comments, relayed in a White House transcript, came as Biden addressed a Democratic party gathering in New York on Wednesday.

He had visited Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement, which ended three decades of violence in the UK province.

During the visit, Democratic Unionist party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson accused the Irish-American president of being "anti-British", and he was angered by the latest intervention.

"If you believe that there should be a special relationship between the US and UK, then at least show us some respect," Wilson told London's Evening Standard newspaper on Thursday.

"It's unbelievable and frightening as well to think this is the man who is the leader of the free world."

The DUP, which wants Northern Ireland to remain part of the UK, is currently boycotting the region's power-sharing government over bitter disagreements on post-Brexit trade.

A renegotiation of the trade protocol by the EU and UK – labelled the Windsor framework – was largely aimed at remedying unionist concerns but the deal has so far been spurned by the DUP.

Asked about Biden's remarks, a spokesperson for the British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, said the framework was "a culmination of substantive work between the UK and the EU".

"And at its heart the UK priority was always protecting the Good Friday Agreement."

During his visit to Ireland, Biden also congratulated an Irish rugby player – a distant relative – who he said had "beat the hell out of the Black and Tans".

Biden meant New Zealand's All Blacks rugby team. The Black and Tans were a notorious British force that sought to quell Irish independence fighters in the early 1920s.