Prime Minister Boris Johnson has compared himself and President Joe Biden to wartime leaders Sir Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Speaking shortly after the 77th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the commemoration of which was once again heavily disrupted by coronavirus restrictions, Prime Minister Johnson suggested that his meeting with the U.S. Democrat at the G7 summit in Cornwall is not unlike Churchill and Roosevelt meeting in 1941 to agree the Atlantic Charter.
“In 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt faced the question of how the world could recover from the devastation of the Second World War which was then going on,” said Johnson, in a social media video overlayed with emotional piano music.
“The world is a very different place in 2021, but the values we share are the same, and I’m pleased that today, with President Biden, we’ve agreed a new Atlantic Charter to address the greatest challenges of our time: building back better from the pandemic, defending our democracy, stopping climate change, and protecting our security,” declared the notionally right-wing Tory leader.
The New Atlantic Charter, published on the British government website with the signatures of the President, first, and the Prime Minister, second. It has a strong globalist bent, and consequently appears to be business as usual, pledging to “strengthen the institutions, laws, and norms that sustain international co-operation to adapt them to meet the new challenges of the 21st century, and guard against those that would undermine them.”
“We will work through the rules-based international order to tackle global challenges together; embrace the promise and manage the peril of emerging technologies; promote economic advancement and the dignity of work; and enable open and fair trade between nations,” it declares.
Elsewhere, it commits Johnson and Biden to “continue building an inclusive, fair, climate-friendly, sustainable, rules-based global economy for the 21st century,” emphasising the two leaders’ belief that “the world has reached a critical point where it must act urgently and ambitiously to tackle the climate crisis, protect biodiversity, and sustain nature” and pledging that “Our countries will prioritise these issues in all our international action.”
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