Mr Biden has long ago made it known that he has deep concerns about the post-Brexit situation in Northern Ireland. The Times yesterday reported that earlier this month, the US’s most senior diplomat in London again conveyed the president’s strong concerns about the North in person to Mr Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, David Frost.

The interesting part here is that the revelation of this latest incident came from the British side, via minutes of a meeting on June 3. That smacks of Mr Johnson being keen to try to deal with Brexit in advance of today’s opening of the G7 summit proper, heading off a danger of the issue stealing his international thunder.

The leaked UK government minutes reveal that Mr Frost was told of Mr Biden’s “great concern” over the UK stance during a tense encounter with Ms Yael Lempert. In the absence of a new US ambassador to London, she is running the embassy, and the official British reports say she “slowly and gravely read her instructions [from Washington] aloud”.

She warned that the increasingly hostile dispute between Britain and the EU over the protocol was “commanding the attention” of the president.

The encounter is described as a “démarche”, which is a formal diplomatic device of protest or rebuke that is
rarely used. It packs a considerable diplomatic punch in relations between two friendly nations.

The UK memo said that the US “strongly urged” London to achieve a “negotiated settlement”, even if that meant “unpopular compromises”. It went on to add: “Lempert said the US was increasingly concerned about the stalemate on implementing the protocol. This was undermining the trust of our two main allies. The US strongly urged the UK to achieve a negotiated settlement.”

Most strongly it further noted: “Lempert implied that the UK had been inflaming the rhetoric, by asking if we would keep it ‘cool’.” Ms Lempert also tried a bit of conciliation by stating that any Northern Ireland compromises would not dent chances of a new post Brexit US-UK trade deal.

This Washington-London trade deal, in the wake of Brexit, is another thing ardently sought by Mr Johnson. And that point was strongly noted by Taoiseach Micheál Martin in his comments on the development. Ms Lempert concluded by saying that the US was available to help achieve an EU-US compromise.

This London Times report tallied with strong earlier comments by Mr Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday. It also chimed with comments yesterday in Brussels by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Ms Von der Leyen warned about “fundamental gaps” in the UK honouring its international treaty with the EU which formalises Brexit. She promised “flexibility” in administering the Northern Ireland special trade status arrangements.

But she equally warned that Brussels would move on sanctions against Britain if the current foot-dragging continued.

Mr Biden’s message to Mr Johnson was essentially: fix this damaging row between the US’s two most important allies, the European Union and the United Kingdom.

Mr Johnson’s hopes of a showpiece G7 summit were advanced by he and Mr Biden signing a renewed Atlantic Charter. The original version of this was signed between Winston Churchill and US president FD Roosevelt in 1941 and symbolised the much vaunted “special relationship”.

This new charter commits both countries to defend democracy and free trade with implicit suggestions of a common front against authoritarian regimes in Moscow and Beijing.

But the UK prime minister must also reckon with some Brexit words from the leaders of Germany, Frane and Italy, as well as the EU’s leaders who also include Council President Charles Michel, the former Belgian prime minister.

This strong intervention of Mr Biden is a major diplomatic and morale boost to the Dublin Government which, up to now, has looked pretty embattled by this
crux. Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he believes Mr Biden is growing impatient over this post-Brexit trade row.

But Mr Martin said he did not see Mr Biden’s intervention as a “reprimand” – but an effort to find a trade dispute solution.

“He wants a strong restoration of the transatlantic relationship between Europe and the United States and UK as part of that and I think that’s why he’s probably articulating a degree of impatience with what he would believe to be something that can be resolved,” the Taoiseach said.

As professional politicians, the two leaders quickly got over another potential embarrassment yesterday. This arises from an incident dating back to December 2019 when Joe Biden was told Boris Johnson had just won a big majority in the UK general election.

On that day the future US president made no effort to hide his total disdain. He called Boris Johnson a “physical and emotional clone” of another blond-tousled man, the then-president Donald Trump.

It was all chuminess as the pair held their first face-to-face meeting ahead of today’s leaders’ summit from the world’s greatest economies, the G7, comprising US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and UK, with a high-powered EU delegation thrown in for good measure.

The pair did not have to shrug off any derogatory words used on the election campaign trails. But Mr Johnson will struggle to shrug off another hot issue: Brexit and Northern Ireland’s special trade status.