The National:

BORIS Johnson’s charm offensive in America has gone about as well as Brexit, his garden bridge project and his attempts to strike a trade deal with the US.

In other words, it’s been a disaster, and this time it’s the White House that has been offended.

The Prime Minister isn’t normally one for media scrutiny, with the BBC kindly obliging in saving his face so often … but it seems that even when he does submit himself to questioning, he does it at the wrong moment.

Sharing the stage with US President Joe Biden for a press briefing this week, Johnson followed on from their statements by taking questions from UK journalists in the audience. The US journalists got no such chance to probe Biden, resulting in a complaint to the White House from its press corps.

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To recap: Boris went to America amid a desperate bid to win the president over to a post-Brexit trade deal, and embarrassed the president in front of his media who now lodged an official complaint – with the “entire editorial component of the US pool” going into White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s office to do so, such was their annoyance.

Psaki’s barb when later asked about the reason for the lack of questions for Biden was subtle but cutting.

She told the media: “[Boris Johnson] called on individuals from his press corps without alerting us to that intention in advance.

“I think our relationship with the United Kingdom and with Prime Minister Johnson is so strong and abiding, we will be able to move forward beyond this.”

We know Johnson isn’t one for planning ahead, as a glance at any supermarket shelf will tell you, but even with the “special relationship” left so tattered, this is comically bad diplomacy.

So, why did the US president not take questions?

When the PM went to the press, Biden wished him “good luck” – was he, perhaps, trying to spare his UK counterpart an embarrassment?

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He’ll have remembered when then foreign secretary Johnson performed alongside John Kerry in a 2016 briefing.

It was bad, even by Boris standards. He was quizzed on describing Hillary Clinton as like "a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” and “Lady Macbeth”, told he had “an unusually long history of wild exaggerations and, frankly, outright lies”, and reminded of describing Barack Obama as having an “ancestral dislike for the British empire” because he was part-Kenyan.

Kerry offered him a respite, saying he had heard that “this man is a very smart and capable man”. Boris beamed with gratitude, before Kerry walked over to the other podium, giving Johnson a little tap and reminding him “It’s called diplomacy, Boris”.

If only he’d remembered that advice five years on.