Why Biden Is Rolling Out the Red Carpet for British PM Rishi Sunak

As Rishi Sunak arrived in Washington on Wednesday for his first White House visit as U.K. Prime Minister, it became clear that his relationship with Joe Biden has improved significantly since the U.S. President mistakenly called him “Rashi Sanook” just months earlier.

On Thursday, Biden, 80, and Sunak, 43, will meet for the fifth time since the latter’s appointment in October, when he became the U.K.’s third Prime Minister in a particularly tumultuous year for the nation. Since then, the leaders have crossed paths during the G20 summit, marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and attended a defense meeting with Australia’s Prime Minister in San Diego, as well as the G7 summit in Japan.

But their latest meeting is being viewed as a more intentional display of allyship. “Britain is really important to the U.S. and sometimes it risks being taken for granted but if you look at every major security issue—defense, intelligence, China, Russia, technology—the U.S. and the U.K. are side by side,” says Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and the Americas program at Chatham House.