Two wins for the PM in the US but more difficult problems await him at home
Boris Johnson tried to go global but he was pressed on Britain's energy crisis, fears over food shortages, and warnings from businesses of power cuts that could lead to three-day working weeks.
Tuesday 21 September 2021 18:58, UK
On the 42nd floor balcony of a AG百家乐在线官网scraper in midtown Manhattan, Boris Johnson was flying high as he and his team ticked off the goals of this transatlantic trip.
US President Joe Biden confirmed that his country would double its climate finance to $11.2bn annually, the move the prime minister needed to keep his COP26 plans on track.
The White House also announced it would lift the travel ban for fully-vaccinated travellers from Britain this November. Two concrete wins for Mr Johnson and a trip to the White House to boot.
After the discord over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, when the PM publicly implored President Biden to extend the evacuation deadline (pleas which fell on deaf ears), these successes matter.
The prime minister is learning to lean in where he can find collaboration with President Biden, be it on climate change or on security (the UK, Australia and US trilateral security pact to develop and deploy nuclear submarines in the Indo-Pacific), and lean out where agreement looks hard to find.
And one gritty issue for the prime minister is the issue of the much-lauded US-UK trade deal.
It was billed by Mr Johnson as a post-Brexit booster for Global Britain. Now it appears to be shelved indefinitely.
When I asked the prime minister if he could at least guarantee a trade deal by the end of his five years in office (and four years on from Brexit) he merely said he was "going as fast as we can".
The deal that Donald Trump wanted when he was US president (he said in 2017 the UK was at "the front of the queue") is a deal that Irish-American Mr Biden does not while the thorny issues around the Northern Ireland protocol remain unresolved.
Another hangover from Brexit feeding into difficulties for the government and consumers is supply chain disruption caused by driver and staff shortages.
And these issues are feeding into a bigger perfect storm that is threatening to completely derail the PM's progress on a post-COVID domestic agenda this autumn and winter.
These pressures back home are never far from the agenda in New York and Washington, with the PM being pressed on Britain's energy crisis, fears over food shortages, and warnings from businesses of power cuts leading to three-day working weeks as he sought to go global, albeit for just a few days.
But even in the face of trouble back home, the PM insisted to me there will be no 'winter of discontent'; the energy crisis is "short term"; supply chains "are very secure"; and that he is "very confident" the government would "be able keep energy suppliers going" and "Christmas is on!".
What the prime minister can be a bit more hopeful of this winter is the success of the climate change summit in Glasgow, after President Biden's intervention.
But as for his other promises around winter at home, things are looking far less certain.