Boris received the honour of President-Elect Biden’s first phone call to a European leader this afternoon, and – while the precise order of calls is not known – second-only publicly confirmed call to Justin Trudeau yesterday. A read-out of the call says Boris “warmly congratulated Joe Biden on his election as President of the United States”. They nattered for 20-25 minutes… 

Also discussed:

• The close and longstanding relationship between our countries
• Committed to building on this partnership in the years ahead, in areas such as trade and security – including through NATO
• working closely together on their shared priorities:
  • Climate change
  • Promoting democracy
  • Building back better from the coronavirus pandemic.
• Boris invited Biden to the COP26 summit next year
• They also looked forward to seeing each other in person, including when the UK hosts the G7 Summit in 2021.

Awkwardly, the news that Boris and Biden have spoken broke shortly after Irish Taoiseach Micheál Martin embarrassingly deleted a tweet claiming to have spoken to the US President-Elect before having done done so. It seems Downing Street is not the only one making Twitter-based congratulation errors in recent days…