Brexit leader Nigel Farage has criticised Boris Johnson for returning from his first in-person meeting with Joe Biden without hopes of starting negotiations for a trade agreement, remarking that a deal should have been struck during the Donald Trump administration.
“Boris, where’s the beef?” Mr Farage said on GB News, after Prime Minister Johnson returned to the UK empty-handed, admitting that the Biden administration is not doing free trade agreements.
“The Biden administration is not doing free-trade deals around the world right now but I’ve got absolutely every confidence that a great deal is there to be done,” Johnson said in comments reported by The Times on Thursday.
“There is not going to be a trade deal,” Farage remarked and added that the British government was also forced to suffer being “stab[bed] in the back” when Biden announced a new strategic partnership with the EU to work together on vaccines.
Further, the Johnson government was also forced to backtrack on seeking to join the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA) after the U.S. trade representative said there was no way for other countries to join the pact.
“I’ve never been in any doubt at all that Biden would take the line that was taken by Obama in that famous speech he made here during the referendum; we are indeed under this Democrat Biden-led administration very much at the back of the queue,” Farage said, quoting the remarks of former President Obama when he threatened the UK with downgrading its importance as a trading partner if it voted to leave the EU in 2016.
However, Farage said he did not blame Biden for the failure to agree on a post-Brexit U.S.-UK trade deal, as the former vice president under Obama had always been frank about his feelings towards the UK and Brexit. Mr Farage again blamed the Conservative government for wasting four years post-referendum to tie down a deal during the administration of Donald Trump.
“Trump… does like the United Kingdom. We could have done a trade deal at any point in time during those four years of the Trump administration. Indeed, I was in Trump Tower on the 11th of November, 2016, just two days after the result had come through from the presidential election and his top aides were all saying this is terrific. We can strike a trade deal between our two countries.
“They really wanted to do it. But I’m afraid the Conservative government dropped the ball with Theresa May as prime minister and by the time Brexit was done, by the time we were free to do a trade deal, it was all too late,” Farage said.