RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Mr President must tell the EU to stop playing silly sausages... Why would Joe Biden want to fall out with America's principal NATO ally over a ludicrous semi-domestic squabble?

Brexiteers can put the Biden blimp back in its box. On the eve of the G7, the President has rescinded an official rebuke to Britain over the so-called ‘sausage war’ with the European Union.

That’s if he ever knew anything about it in the first place. America’s national security adviser denied that any alleged ‘démarche’ — diplo-speak for a quiet word in your shell-like — had been issued at the direction of the President. 

Jack Sullivan said Biden had no intention of getting ‘adversarial’ when discussing Northern Ireland with Boris Johnson.

The story was probably put out by an over-enthusiastic aide at the White House and seized upon by the Boys In The Bubble to create an acrimonious eve-of-summit bust-up.

If the White House stops to think about it, they will realise that the EU is the aggressor here, trying to sever Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK

If the White House stops to think about it, they will realise that the EU is the aggressor here, trying to sever Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK

It didn’t make sense. Why would Biden, who has made a great song-and-dance about re-engaging with the rest of the world after the isolationism of the Trump years, want to fall out with America’s principal NATO ally over a ludicrous semi-domestic squabble about sausages?

The only people getting adversial here are the bureaucrats of Brussels, who will weaponise any trifle to punish us for Brexit. 

Actually, I wish I hadn’t written that. It will only put ideas into their heads. Given that they’re trying to stop us sending British bangers to Bangor, how long before we’re plunged into a full-scale sherry trifle war?

This storm in a frying pan ought to be hilarious, reminiscent of that classic episode of Yes, Minister in which Sir Humphrey informed Jim Hacker that on the order of Brussels the Great British Banger was to be renamed the ‘Emulsified Hi-Fat Offal Tube’. That’s if it wasn’t so serious.

Never mind the frying pan, the EU is trying to start a forest fire along the Irish border, by banning shipments of chilled meats to the Province from the mainland.

In so doing, they are destabilising the devolved assembly at Stormont and deliberately provoking the loyalists in Northern Ireland. Shamefully, they have been attempting to drag in the new U.S. President at a summit designed to spread peace, harmony and free trade and plot a course out of the Covid pandemic.

Never mind the frying pan, the EU is trying to start a forest fire along the Irish border, by banning shipments of chilled meats to the Province from the mainland. EU officials are seen arriving at Cornwall airport

Never mind the frying pan, the EU is trying to start a forest fire along the Irish border, by banning shipments of chilled meats to the Province from the mainland. EU officials are seen arriving at Cornwall airport

OK, so a loophole in the Brexit protocol — slipped in under the radar when the appalling Theresa May was doing her best to sign a surrender treaty — gives the EU the opportunity to make mischief.

But this isn’t about food safety standards, it’s about subjugation, trying to force Boris to take the knee to Brussels, with the EU annexing Northern Ireland in the process.

Naturally, Biden is concerned about preserving the Good Friday Agreement. Who isn’t, apart from a few republican and loyalist hardliners?

But the only party causing a breach of the peace right now is the EU. Nobody at Westminster, nor in Stormont, is floating scare stories about putting a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. 

Why would anyone want to go to the wall — or restart a war — over sausages and chicken nuggets?

With goodwill on both sides, this could have been sorted out in an Irish Heartbeat (© Van Morrison and The Chieftains). But there is no goodwill, only intransigence and aggression, coming from Brussels.

As for Boris behaving badly, don’t forget that the first attempt to rip up the protocol was the EU threatening to stop the export of life-or-death Covid vaccines to Britain. 

Next to that, a spat over sausages really does pale into insignificance. The small print aside, Britain has yet to deviate from EU food safety standards. So what’s the problem?

Someone should remind Biden that it is EU food regulations which have partially prevented the U.S. signing a proper transatlantic free-trade deal. 

Every time a tariff-free deal is mooted, the usual suspects start scaremongering about imports of chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef from America flooding the market and causing a Covid-style food poisoning pandemic.

If the White House stops to think about it, they will realise that the EU is the aggressor here, trying to sever Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK. 

The new DUP leader Edwin Poots has rightly compared it to the U.S. state of Alaska being forced to take its laws from Canada.

If Biden is inclined to view Ireland through emerald green-tinted glasses, it’s not because of senility — as some enraged Brexiteers have suggested — it’s entirely down to sentimentality.

When questioned about his loyalties by the BBC, Biden had no hesitation in replying: ‘I’m Irish.’ He comes from generations of Americans who cleave to their ancestral roots.

Anyone who has been in the U.S. on St Patrick’s Day will be familiar with the over-the-top celebrations, the shamrocks, the green beer. In Boston, they even dye the river green.

But this is a Disneyfied, Finnegans Wake view of the world, which tends to see Ireland from a fiddly-diddly, Free State perspective and ignores the sensibilities of those in the North who remain proud to be British red, white and blue.

It also overlooks the fact there are as many Irish-Americans of Northern Irish and Scottish Protestant descent as there are Catholics. The demographics are also changing dramatically.

In the last U.S. census only 34.7 million Americans claimed Irish ancestry, down from 40.2 million in 1980.

Nobody doubts Biden’s sincerity in wanting to keep the peace in Ireland. But if that’s his goal, he should start twisting the arms of the EU and tell them to grow up, stop playing silly burghers and accept that Brexit is a done deal.

Most Americans I’ve ever spoken to, wedded as they are to the sacred ideal of national sovereignty and self-determination, were enthusiastic supporters of Britain regaining her independence.

The G7 Summit is a golden opportunity for Boris to sell Biden his vision of a freebooting global Britain, as a staunch economic and military ally of the U.S. no longer hamstrung by a protectionist EU superstate.

There are big issues to be sorted out here, everything from firing up a post-Covid recovery, to promoting international trade and facing down expansionist China and terror-sponsoring rogue states.

The summit shouldn’t be derailed by petulant EU troublemakers stirring up parochial political problems, destabilising Northen Ireland and trying to start a ruinous and wholly unnecessary trade war over sausages.

Now that's a beast of Bodmin! 

There’s always been something preposterous about the security overkill which surrounds U.S. Presidential visits abroad. Mile-long motorcades may not look out of place in Washington, but 17 supersized black SUVs steaming along the A30 in Cornwall is positively incongruous.

I’ve heard of the Beast of Bodmin but this is ridiculous.

Biden’s convoy reminded me of Clarkson and the Top Gear team driving a giant Ford 150 pick-up truck through the Cotswolds and getting stuck every 50 yards.

I also remember boxing’s Frank Warren telling me about his American joint promoter Don King buying him a Humvee as a thank-you present after helping organise a successful world title fight. 

This massive military vehicle was the first to arrive in Britain after gaining popularity during the first Gulf War. King presented it to him at a hotel in Park Lane and Warren had to drive it home to Hertfordshire.

As he progressed through the narrow streets of North London, Frank thought he could hear clapping everywhere he went. It was only later that he realised it wasn’t applause, it was the sound of wing mirrors being ripped off parked cars.

Biden’s convoy reminded me of Clarkson and the Top Gear team driving a giant Ford 150 pick-up truck through the Cotswolds and getting stuck every 50 yards

Biden’s convoy reminded me of Clarkson and the Top Gear team driving a giant Ford 150 pick-up truck through the Cotswolds and getting stuck every 50 yards

Meanwhile, the Ring of Steel round the summit resembles the Green Zone in Baghdad. They’re prepared for every possible mode of terrorist attack from land, sea and air.

But I wonder if the natural world might have other ideas. The plane carrying the Washington Press Pack — America’s Boys In The Bubble — was delayed for several hours by a swarm of cicadas, described as a superfamily of flying insects.

Meanwhile, our native seagulls are sharpening their beaks. Only this week, the Air Force reported that gulls have graduated from attacking small drones and now have the Stealth bomber fleet at RAF Fairford, near Swindon, in their sights.

If Stealth bombers are under threat, what chance does the Presidential helicopter Marine One stand against the seagulls of Cornwall’s Carbis Bay!