Sunak Washington visit faces being overshadowed by Ukraine crisis

Rishi Sunak is heading to Washington DC for a meeting with Joe Biden that Downing Street hopes will be marked by warm words over trade ties, but now risks being overshadowed by the rapidly unfolding situation in Ukraine.

In a swift, two-day visit, the prime minister will be granted the full force of US diplomacy, including a joint press conference with Biden and a stay in Blair House, the official presidential guest residency, whose last occupant from No 10 was David Cameron.

Sunak will enjoy the attention paid, not least as a sign of the White House treating him as a more reliable and relatable UK counterpart after the turbulence of Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss.

Related: Sunak has ‘little England mentality’ over UK foreign policy, says Lammy

The prime minister faces a packed schedule, including his White House bilateral meeting with the president, an event alongside a mass of US business leaders, and a baseball game – although the original plan for Sunak to make the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ stadium has been discarded by No 10 given the potential for high-profile mishap.

It is, nonetheless, a trip without any immediate policy purpose, with even mooted focuses such as Sunak pushing for the UK to host a global regulator on AI, or to make the case for Ben Wallace as the next Nato secretary general, not necessarily featuring in discussions.

Broader issues of economic security would be a key focus, Sunak’s official spokesperson said before the trip, comprising “everything from protecting our supply chains and insulating our economies from manipulation from hostile states, to increasing our mutual investment in green technology to governing the development and use of artificial intelligence”.

While Ukraine was already very much on the agenda, along with wider defence cooperation, the leaders will meet amid a dangerous and unstable situation in southern Ukraine, following the collapse of a vast dam on the Dnipro River that Kyiv says was blown up by Russian forces to hamper a Ukrainian military push.

Many thousands of people are being moved from the waters unleashed by the already overfilled dam, while it is feared the ecological consequences will be huge and long-lasting.

Sunak and Biden were already scheduled to discuss “how we can sustain the huge level of global support for Ukraine, while providing them with the capabilities they need, including air defence”, the prime minister’s spokesperson said.

With a formal post-Brexit free-trade deal with the US now not on the horizon, Sunak will instead push for other ways to boost economic links, including at a gathering of US business leaders hosted by Mary Barra, the chief executive of General Motors.

Sunak will spend a period on Wednesday meeting individual senators and Congress members on Capitol Hill, although No 10 has yet to say who has been lined up. He will also lay a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery.

Labour has urged Sunak to make progress in getting some sort of agreement on UK market access after Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which directs many billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits toward renewable energy and other green measures, a plan the UK government has labelled “protectionist”.

Such language seems unlikely to resurface in the talks this week, with Sunak instead keen to stress his links to a president he will be meeting for the fourth time in as many months and a fifth time since he became prime minister.

While Downing Street will relish the footage of Sunak in the Oval Office and alongside Biden at the White House press conference lecterns, it has dodged the proposed idea of Sunak hurling the first pitch when the Nationals take on the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday evening, a game officially designated as a US-UK friendship event.

Conservative MPs and ministers, still bruised from their party’s recent chaos, are largely content to allow Sunak to appear broadly competent and statesmanlike and hope the economy improves before the next election, so even a largely undramatic Washington trip will serve that purpose