Rishi Sunak offers verdict on Joe Biden’s psychological agility after reminiscence warning

Rishi Sunak has no considerations about Joe Biden’s psychological agility, No10 has insisted.

The US President has come beneath hearth after a report steered the chief of the free world has “significantly limited” reminiscence. It follows a collection of high-profile gaffes, together with remarks that noticed him confuse Egypt and Mexico final week.

Asked if Mr Sunak had any worries about Mr Biden’s psychological agility, the PM’s official spokesman replied merely: “No.” Concerns in regards to the 81-year-old US President’s reminiscence had been raised in a report by particular counsel Robert Hur into Mr Biden’s dealing with of categorised paperwork, which cleared him of wrongdoing.

Mr Hur mentioned Mr Biden had come throughout as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in interviews. Mr Biden struck again final week, saying his reminiscence is “fine”.

Mr Sunak has had a number of conferences with the US President since taking on as PM. Last June he was welcomed by the US President for a go to to the White House. As they sat down within the Oval Office, Mr Biden started the dialog by by chance referring to the PM as “Mr President”.

Correcting himself, he instructed Mr Sunak: “Mr President? I’m just promoting you, Mr Prime Minister. It’s great to have you back. In the past few months we have met each other in San Diego and then we met in Belfast and we met Hiroshima.

“And now we’re here we’re going solve all the problems of the world in the next 20 minutes.”

No10 mentioned the UK is dedicated to standing with allies in opposition to Russia after Donald Trump mentioned he would “encourage” Putin to assault nations that do not pay their payments. Mr Trump and Mr Biden look set to be the 2 candidates going head-to-head within the US election later this yr.

In one other worrying signal of issues to return, Mr Trump instructed a rally on Saturday that he would not shield NATO allies who had been behind on their funds. He claimed he would inform a frontrunner beneath risk from Moscow: “No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them to do whatever they want.”

Quizzed about Mr Trump’s comment, the PM’s spokesman mentioned: “ So I’m not going to get into specific commentary on things said during political rallies, but clearly from the UK perspective we are fully committed to standing with our allies to combat Russian aggression and make it clear Russia that it will not succeed in intimidating Europe. We will do whatever is needed as part of NATO to protect our national security.”

But he mentioned he was assured US-UK relations could be sturdy whoever wins the election. He mentioned: “Of course, we’ve always said that we’ll always look at the US and we work with the US through a number of different administrations, and and will continue to do so in the future.“