G7 Summit 2021: Joe Biden jets off for UK to meet Boris Johnson and Queen

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Joe Biden has left the White House for the G7 Summit in Cornwall, where he will arrive this evening as he begins his first overseas trip as US President. 

Mr Biden and his wife Jill, a university professor, are expected to land at RAF Mildenhall, Suffolk in Air Force One as they kick off an eight-day trip to Europe.

He will meet US military personnel stationed at the base before heading to Carbis Bay near St Ives, where the leaders of Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Japan and Canada will gather over the weekend.

Mr Biden is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Boris Johnson for face-to-face talks tomorrow – the first time the two men will have met in person – before the summit formally gets underway on Friday.  

When the summit ends on Sunday, the President and First Lady will meet the Queen at Windsor Castle.

Mr Biden will then depart for Brussels where he will attend a NATO summit, privately meet key ally Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, and attend a joint US-EU summit. He will then head to Geneva for a bilateral showdown with Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

In an article for the Washington Post, Mr Biden said that the trip is about ‘realising America’s renewed commitment to our allies and partners’ as he attempts to build bridges with Britain and the EU after some leaders including Angela Merkel clashed with his predecessor Donald Trump. 

The Republican president engaged in a bitter trade row with the EU and slammed NATO members for failing to spend more on defence – sparking fears that he would pull the US out of the military alliance and embolden Russian activity in Ukraine and eastern Europe.

Mr Trump also formally withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Agreement – both negotiated by Barack Obama. One of Mr Biden’s first acts as President was to rejoin the climate accord and reopen nuclear talks with the Iranian government, as he sought to reverse the actions of the previous administration. 

The White House has said that Mr Biden will meet with Mr Johnson to ‘affirm the special relationship between our nations’ – a term which the prime minister reportedly dislikes because it is ‘too needy’.  

Whitehall is understood to have viewed the President’s decision to make the UK his first overseas destination as a major diplomatic victory for Mr Johnson. 

The Prime Minister has lavished praised on Mr Biden since he won power in the election last year, in the hope of striking a new free trade deal with the US. 

However, there are concerns that he and the President may not get along, after Democratic sources previously questioned whether Mr Johnson was an ‘ally’.

Mr Johnson had sought close relations with Mr Trump, causing Mr Biden to call him a ‘physical and emotional clone’ of the controversial Republican president. 

Mr Johnson faced fierce domestic criticism over his relationship with Mr Trump, but has defended the ties and has insisted that prime ministers should always have the ‘best possible’ ties with sitting US presidents.

There has also been speculation Mr Johnson and Mr Biden could struggle to work together because of the Prime Minister’s past criticism of Mr Obama, in whose administration Mr Biden served as vice president. 

US concerns about the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland could also derail efforts to strike a trade deal. 

Mr Biden is expected to put pressure on the UK to abide by the Northern Ireland Protocol established during Brexit negotiations in order to preserve the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told the BBC: ‘President Biden believes and has said that the Northern Ireland Protocol, as part of the agreement between the UK and the European Union, is critical to ensuring that the spirit, promise and future of the Good Friday Agreement is protected.

‘That being said, of course the UK and EU need to work out the specifics and the modalities on that, need to find some way to proceed that works both for the EU and the UK. But whatever way they find to proceed must, at its core, fundamentally protect the gains of the Good Friday Agreement and not imperil that.

‘And that is the message that President Biden will send when he is in Cornwall.’ 

However, there were positive signs in March of the ‘special relationship’ warming up after Mr Biden’s climate envoy John Kerry visited London for talks with Mr Johnson. The positive trend continued in May when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington has ‘no closer partner’ than the UK. 

Mr Biden will join others from the G7 group of leading economies in Carbis Bay on Friday, where Devon and Cornwall Police are expecting climate protests.

Mr Johnson plans to use the summit to urge the members – also including Canada, Japan, France, Germany and Italy – to ‘defeat’ Covid-19 by helping to vaccinate the world by the end of next year.  

The White House said in April when it confirmed the trip to Europe that Mr Biden will ‘highlight his commitment to restoring our alliances, revitalizing the Transatlantic relationship, and working in close cooperation with our allies and multilateral partners to address global challenges and better secure America’s interests’.  

During an official visit to the UK, Mr Blinken said that the ‘special relationship’ is ‘enduring’, ‘effective’ and ‘dynamic’ as well as being ‘close to the hearts of the American people’. 

Speaking at a press conference in Downing Street alongside Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Mr Blinken said: ‘It is also the 75th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s famous speech at Westminster College in Missouri where he described the Special Relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States and how vital it is for our two countries and many others around the world.

‘Three quarters of a century later, that Special Relationship is enduring, it is effective, it is dynamic and it is close to the hearts of the American people. The United States has no closer ally, no closer partner, than the United Kingdom and I am very glad for the chance to say that again here today.’  

The US President’s security team for the Summit is reportedly so vast they will have to stay in more than 50 hired luxury camper vans because there is not enough accommodation.

The recrational vehicles have been delivered to St Mawgan airbase near Newquay, 20 miles from where the meeting of leaders takes place in the tiny Cornish resort of Carbis Bay at the weekend.

A 400-strong contingent of Secret Service agents and support staff will be at the summit, but with thousands of holidaymakers already in the area, almost every hotel and B&B in a 30-mile radius of the summit has been booked.

Meanwhile, video footage showed two Sea King and three V-22 Osprey helicopters soaring above Cornwall and Devon as they practiced the route the President will take from the airbase to Tregenna Castle Resort, St Ives, after Air Force One lands at RAF Mildenhall and then Newquay airport on Wednesday. 

Some 1,000 police will be staying on a cruise liner docked in Falmouth harbour and others will stay in RVs currently parked up at the RAF airbase near Newquay. 

It comes after a long line of caravans clogged up the A30 on Monday as holidaymakers made their way to the southern-most point of England. One photograph shared on social media showed heavy traffic that had been ‘crawling’ for around 20 minutes near the Devon-Cornwall border.   

Meanwhile for the summit, some 30 vehicles have been leased from a Somerset company called Empire RV, which usually supplies luxury vehicles for film shoots and Grand Prix events.

The US camper vans are so large that the company warns many can only be driven by one of their experienced staff and are not available for self-drive hire. The most luxurious ones – some the size of an articulated lorry – can sleep up to eight people and come equipped with satellite TV and other comforts.

The RVsare expected to be driven to the Tregenna Hotel in Carbis Bay where the US President is due to stay during the three-day conference. The castle boasts 98 bedrooms and is the grandest hotel in the county, featuring a 72-acre estate and an 18-hole golf course.

The US motor homes have been rented for £2,500 each for a week by the US Embassy in London and include the 45ft long former RV used by Jensen Button when he was racing in Formula 1.  

A spokesman for Bristol based Empire RV said they had set up a mini village at the St Mawgan airbase. 

A helicopter, which is dubbed Marine One when the US president is onboard, practised landing on the golf course at the Tregenna Castle Resort – where President Biden and the other leaders will stay – on Monday. 

Pilots familiarising the route they will take after Air Force One lands at Newquay Airport later this week have taken to the skies above Cornwall in recent days.  Three US Marine Osprey aircraft have been seen over St Michael Mount and the Carbis Bay area.

The aircrafts’ purpose is to fly White House staff during the President’s trips abroad. They also transport Secret Service agents that follow Marine One in case the helicopter goes down.   

Ospreys were seen over Haldon Hills near Exeter at 8pm on Monday, where it is thought they may have just left Exeter Airport. By 8.40pm the aircraft were spotted landing at Tregenna Castle Resort. 

The helicopters were seen landing at Carlyon Bay, St Austell, at 9.45pm, before descending onto Tregenna Castle Resort at 10.15pm.    The aircraft were brought to the UK on the US Air Force’s Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. 

They were offloaded at the Royal Navy airbase Culdrose, near Helston, on Sunday. The impressive US-military aircraft flew high over the steep sand dunes of Hayle beach, St Ives, at around 9.30pm on Monday.

Ospreys have helicopter-style propellers so they can take-off and land vertically. Stephen Park, 37 from, Stockport, Greater Manchester was on holiday when his 14-year-old son Harry Park took a video of the machines.

Mr Park said: ‘They really thunder past, and it kind of rattles through you, so you know when they’re going to come overhead. It’s quite an impressive thing to see and unique because I think we were the only people on the beach at the time.

‘The whole thing seemed like an exercise – maybe a dummy run for the real thing. Harry was really excited about all the military planes and world leaders being here at the same time as us.’

Meanwhile, thousands of police officers drafted in from across the country have begun arriving in Devon and Cornwall ahead of the G7 summit. Five thousand mutual aid officers, from forces across the UK, will assist during the event at Carbis Bay Hotel between June 11 and 13.

A briefing centre made up of large marquees has been set up in Devon for all officers to pass through ahead of their deployment. The officers, mainly arriving in police vans and on coaches, must produce a negative lateral flow test for Covid-19 before entering the centre. They are then provided with kit such as body-worn cameras before receiving a hot meal – one of three provided for officers each day – and a takeaway cream tea.

A 40-minute video briefing from Devon and Cornwall Police officers features topics including the force’s ‘neighbourhood style’ of policing, as well as how to respond to a chemical or terror attack.

Officers pass through welfare tents before being handed a bag containing a reusable spork, mug and water bottle and heading to accommodation in the area.

Superintendent Joanne Hall, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said there would be ‘really high standards of welfare’ for the 6,500 officers and staff on duty during the summit. 

‘They’re fed well so when they go out on their deployment, they do a really good job for us in our communities,’ she said. ‘They’ll get a taste of Devon and Cornwall before they leave with a cream tea. That is leading to the inevitable arguments of the Devon way or the Cornwall way.’

A Devon cream tea features cream on the scone, with jam on top. The Cornish version has jam on first and then cream. Ms Hall said the Covid-19 pandemic and the numbers of officers involved had led to the tented briefing area.

‘We’ve got significant numbers of officers helping us police this big event so we need a really big venue or marquee to allow us to host them, but no-one has ever done this in Covid,’ she said.

‘We need to make sure that everything we do is Covid-secure so this has been specifically designed to allow us to get those big numbers through and keep everyone safe.’

She said part of the briefing provided to officers included being ‘proportionate at all times’. Those deployed on the frontline during the summit include firearms and dog officers, as well as some who will be policing cordons on 12-hour shifts.

‘In Devon and Cornwall, we are used to working in a massive geographical area but a lot of forces won’t be used to the distances that we travel across,’ Ms Hall said. ‘We make it clear that this is a very, very big area and our numbers swell every year from 1.8 million to 11 million in the summer.’

Police have already warned residents of Carbis Bay and the St Ives area to expect travel delays, road closures and diversions due to the summit. Residents will need to show two forms of identification before being allowed to pass through checkpoints.

Ms Hall said the restrictions were to ensure residents and delegates could ‘safely’ go in and out of the Carbis Bay area but day visitors would not be allowed.

Chief Inspector Russell Dawe, lead planner for the summit at Devon and Cornwall Police, described it as ‘the largest event of 2021 within England’. 

‘Our intention is to police this in the Devon and Cornwall style of policing, so very community-focused,’ Mr Dawe said. ‘There will be disruption and we’ve been very open with the public throughout the build-up to this event.

‘We’ve got world leaders that are coming into a beautiful area of the South West, there is going to be disruption but I would ask that the communities just bear with us. The diversions are in place to keep the traffic flowing as best we can.’

Almost 40 protest groups have made contact with police ahead of the summit. Designated sites have been set up away from Carbis Bay but it is expected that some may go to the area.

Mr Dawe said police would facilitate peaceful protest, with ‘recognised locations’ in suitable places. 

He acknowledged that protesters would want to get the attention of world leaders at the summit. ‘Protesters will want to get their voice and their message heard, which is right, but that needs to be done in a peaceful and lawful manner,’ he said.

Extra staff are working in the force’s two control rooms and a temporary unit has been set up to deal with G7 calls.

Superintendent Jane Alford-Mole said there was ‘already demand’ due to Covid-19 restrictions lifting and the holiday period. She asked for people to only call 999 in emergency situations and to use 101 and the force’s website, email and chat service if not.

‘We’ve got a temporary control room that is set up for G7 and we’re staffing that 24/7 through the whole of the G7,’ she said.

The force is ‘confident’ it will be able to deal with calls regarding G7, as well as other incidents in Devon and Cornwall, during the period, she added.