Boris Johnson?s ?Global Britain? Makes Shaky Start at G7 Summit

But as Mr. Johnson drew the Group of 7 meeting to a close, Brexit and the pandemic conspired to cloud its debut.Rather than extolling global agreements to combat climate change or confront China, Mr. Johnson found himself at a news conference on Sunday dodging questions about a four-week delay in Britain’s reopening of its economy and trying to play down an ugly clash with the European Union over Northern Ireland.The latter issue dramatizes the long shadow Brexit is casting on Mr. Johnson’s effort to rebrand Britain as a vital player on the global stage. He insisted it occupied a “vanishingly small proportion of our deliberations.” And he expressed enthusiasm about his first face-to-face interaction with Mr. Biden, whose aides initially viewed Mr. Johnson with suspicion because of a perception that he was an ideological twin of the populist, pro-Brexit Mr. Trump.Mr. Johnson explained his cultivation of Mr. Trump by saying, “It is the job of all prime ministers, everybody who does my job, to have a close working relationship with the president of the United States.”Since the American election, however, Mr. Johnson said he and Mr. Biden had found common ground on issues like climate change, education for women and girls and a middle-class economic agenda.