UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has revealed he was one of the first world leaders to speak to purported US president-elect Joe Biden on Tuesday afternoon.
The UK PM tweeted that he had conferred his desire to strengthen the partnership between the two countries and working on “shared priorities”.
Joe Biden phoned the UK PM at 4pm for a 25-minute chat, British media reported including BBC and The Sun.
According to Boris Johnson’s aides, the phone call with the presumed incoming President was “warm”, focusing on the coronavirus pandemic and climate change, despite sources claiming Biden raised “concerns” about Brexit, ostensibly underscoring it threatens peace in Northern Ireland.
“They talked about the importance of implementing Brexit in such a way that upholds the Good Friday Agreement, and the PM assured the President-elect that would be the case,” a No 10 source was cited as saying.
Name Gaffe
The call came just hours after an embarrassing gaffe by No 10 in an earlier tweet congratulating Biden.
Earlier, the UK PM had tweeted a white-on-black graphic image a few hours after major US media outlets declared Biden the winner of the US presidential elections.
The tweet addressed to Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris seemed to reveal that Downing Street could have anticipated until the very last moment that Donald Trump would win re-election.
As the message congratulated the projected president-elect on winning the presidency and Harris “on her historic achievement”, it also featured the barely visible words “Trump on”.
Also, in the part which read “the US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together”, the words “second term” could be discerned.
A UK government spokesman later dismissed the visual controversy as no more than a technical glitch, saying that two statements had been prepared in advance “for the outcome of this closely contested election”.
“A technical error meant that parts of the alternative message were embedded in the background of the graphic,” the spokesperson was quoted by The Guardian as saying.
Source: Agencies
