Boris Johnson's tweet congratulating Joe Biden carries remnants of a message congratulating Trump instead

• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's congratulatory message to US President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris carries remnants of an earlier version that appears to congratulate President Donald Trump instead.
• Johnson posted a statement congratulating the pair on Saturday after most news outlets projected them as winners of the election.
• Closer inspection of the image, when it was adjusted by photo-editing tools, shows the outline of Trump's name beneath where Biden's is written.
• Johnson was one of Trump's closest international allies and has yet to meet or speak with the president-elect.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's message congratulating President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris for winning the US election carries remnants of an earlier version congratulating President Donald Trump instead.

Johnson on Saturday congratulated Biden and Harris with a statement on Twitter that was posted as an image.

The statement said: "Congratulations to Joe Biden on his election as President of the United States and to Kamala Harris on her historic achievement.

"The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security."

But when the exposure of the photo is adjusted using photo-editing tools, it is possible to make out the outline of what appears to be Trump's name above Biden's on the message, indicating that Downing Street may have been anticipating a different outcome for the election.

"As you'd expect, two statements were prepared in advance for the outcome of this closely contested election," a government spokesman said Tuesday. "A technical error meant that parts of the alternative message were embedded in the background of the graphic."

See part of the original Trump message below

The font size of the "Trump" letters, traces of which are visible elsewhere in the message, also appear to be significantly smaller, indicating that the prime minister's message of congratulations to Trump might have been longer than the one he offered to Biden and Harris.

The mistake originally appears to have been spotted by a Twitter user and was subsequently reported by outlets including the UK news site Guido Fawkes, which identified other elements in the image appearing to refer to Trump's "second term."