President Biden ordered US officials to issue Boris Johnson with an extraordinary diplomatic rebuke for imperilling the Northern Ireland peace process over Brexit, The Times can reveal.
Yael Lempert, America’s most senior diplomat in Britain, told Lord Frost, the Brexit minister, at a meeting that the government was “inflaming” tensions in Ireland and Europe with its opposition to checks at ports in the province.
In a move described as “unprecedented” by the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, Lempert said she had been told to take the step of issuing London with a demarche, a formal diplomatic reprimand seldom exchanged between allies.
The memo was reported before the first meeting between Biden and Johnson today, and follows the failure yesterday of talks between Frost and
