BORIS Johnson will not be appearing at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, but the weekly session will go ahead anyway.
The Conservative leader is currently out of the UK on a visit to the US, where he met with US president Joe Biden at the White House last night.
He is in America for the week, and will give a speech to the 76th annual general assembly of the United Nations in New York tonight.
Yesterday during their meeting, Biden downplayed prospects of a post-Brexit trade deal with the UK – and ministers resorted to considering downgrading efforts and instead try to join an existing pact between the US, Mexico and Canada.
Biden did not counter the assertion from his predecessor Barack Obama’s that Britain would be at the “back of the queue” for a post-Brexit free trade agreement.
Sitting next to Johnson, the US President told reporters: “We’re going to talk a little bit about trade today and we’re going to have to work that through.”
With Johnson still in the US, alongside Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, he will be replaced by his deputy at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions at 12pm.
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Dominic Raab formerly held Truss’s current position, but lost that role during last week’s Cabinet reshuffle. Despite unhappiness over his handling of the Afghanistan situation, Raab was appointed Justice Secretary, Lord Chancellor and also deputy prime minister.
He had already stood in for Johnson when the Prime Minister was hospitalised with Covid in the initial weeks of the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown, and it will not be his first time fielding questions in Westminster on behalf of the Tory leader.
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