Stanley Johnson, father of newly-elected U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, predicted Tuesday that his son will get along well with President Trump.
Boris Johnson on Tuesday won the Conservative Party’s leadership contest to become the next prime minister, and will likely interact with the U.S. president as the U.K. hashes out post-Brexit relationships with allies.
The two leaders have at least one thing in common, Stanley Johnson said. “They’ve got the same kind of hairstyle, I suppose,” he told CNN.
“Well I listened to what Trump said about Boris when he came here. I don’t think they actually met, but I think Trump said what a good chap Boris is or something like that. So prima facie, they ought to get on.” {mosads}
Trump congratulated Johnson, the U.K.’s former foreign secretary, on his leadership win, tweeting that the next prime minister “will be great.”
Stanley Johnson, speaking to CNN, cautioned that despite the bond between the two leaders, the U.K. will have to “be careful not to be too slavishly geared to America.”
“And that’s why, oddly enough, I think almost the most important thing we can do is [after] we leave Europe is to build bridges with Europe,” he said.
“We need still to be part of major groupings and the European one has been very effective on some of these issues,” he said, regarding climate change and deforestation. “So I think that yes, we build a relationship with America but I’d like to see us build another key relationship with Europe.”
Johnson inherits an ongoing battle to negotiate a Brexit deal. Former Prime Minister David Cameron stepped down after the 2016 referendum vote ended in favor of leaving the European Union, and his successor, Theresa May, resigned earlier this year after failed negotiations.