Biden, UK’s Johnson to unveil renewed Atlantic Charter

President Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson are set to meet on Thursday for the first time since Biden took office in an effort to strengthen the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Great Britain, officials said.

Thursday’s meeting is expected to include an announcement of a renewed Atlantic Charter and the resumption of travel between the two countries. The Atlantic Charter, first created by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, declared post-war cooperation in 1941 during World War II.

The relationship between the world leaders has been strained in the past, with Biden referring to Johnson as a “physical and emotional clone” of former President Trump. The pair also reportedly did not see eye to eye on Brexit.

Jake Sullivan, U.S. national security adviser, told The Associated Press, however, that initial talks between Johnson and Biden have been “warm” and “constructive.”

“They’ve been very much down to business,” Sullivan said at the White House this week. “And I expect that their meeting together will just cover the waterfront. I mean, really, a wide range of issues where the two of them and the U.S and United Kingdom do see eye to eye.”

Johnson, meanwhile, expressed his willingness to find common ground in a recent interview with the AP.

“There is far more that unites the government of this country and government in Washington — any time, any stage — than divides us,” Johnson said. 

On Wednesday, Biden expressed his desire to rally U.S. allies during his trip to Europe and pledged to “respond in a robust and meaningful way” to Russia’s movement of troops to Ukraine’s borders.

“I believe we’re in an inflection point in world history,” Biden said. “ [It’s] a moment where it falls to us to prove that democracies not just endure, but they will excel as we rise to seize enormous opportunities in the new age.”