Britain’s former US Ambassador Kim Darroch, a man best known for losing his job as a result of speaking his mind too much, has voiced his disapproval at Prince Harry’s candid admission about the number of Taliban fighters he killed in Afghanistan. Among the barrage of jaw-dropping, headline-grabbing confessions from his forthcoming autobiography, Prince Harry openly confirms he shot dead 25 Taliban combatants. Immediately sparking security concerns…
The new king of progressive causes writes “You can’t kill people if you see them as people” so he regarded them as “chess pieces removed from the board . . . bad guys eliminated”.
This morning Lord Darroch told Sky that had he been advising Harry, “I would have advised against the kind of detail that he goes into there… I personally wouldn’t have gone there.” If anyone should be advising Prince Harry on candour, it’s the former US ambassador who resigned after writing cables describing the US government as “inept” and “uniquely dysfunctional”…
Sir Kim Darroch – who stood down as American Ambassador last year after his diplomatic cables describing the Trump administration as “inept and insecure” were revealed by Steven Edgington – is being introduced to the Lords today. Accepting the peerage in Theresa May’s resignation honours…
Eyebrows are being raised at one of his supporters (who introduces him to the Lords by walking behind the new peer) is none other than Lord Geidt – who, from 2007 to 2017, served as the Queen’s “most trusted” aide. Mumbling from Lords sources this is a deliberate political statement and a snub at Trump…
YouGov have conducted some remarkably speedy polling of the public’s attitude towards the Kim Darroch affair, although the fieldwork was conducted before his resignation. Over half the public thought it was wrong for the comments to have been leaked, 37% went further and said it was also wrong for the press to have published them. Good luck getting journalists not to publish a scoop like that…
On the issue of whether Darroch should have been replaced however, the public were much more split. 41% thought the next PM should have kept Darroch in place, while 35% thought that he should have been replaced with “someone more able to have good relations with the US Government”. Unsurprisingly there’s a very high “don’t know” response of 24%…
There’s already a clear Leave-Remain split on the issue, Remainers favoured keeping Darroch by 58% to 20% while Leavers favoured replacing him by 52% to 28%. More Tories also favoured replacing him, while Labour and Lib Dems supporters tended to want to keep him in place.
The reality is that what made Darroch’s resignation inevitable was Trump’s incredibly hostile response to the leak. The suggestion being put about by “friends of Darroch” that he was somehow going to stay in Washington for the next six months while being frozen out of every single meeting and function with the Trump administration, but then dramatically changed his mind after watching last night’s TV debate is plainly a fantasy. Darroch could have left office with his head held high as the innocent victim of a malicious leak against him, instead he has decided to turn it into a political attack on Boris…
The UK’s ambassador to the US Kim Darroch has resigned after the Mail on Sunday’s explosive leaks. Darroch’s position had clearly become untenable after the Trump administration froze him out and Trump himself launched a barrage of tweets attacking him directly. Darroch says:
“Although my posting is not due to end until the end of this year, I believe in the current circumstances the responsible course is to allow the appointment of a new ambassador.”
Particularly with Brexit going on, the realpolitik is that the UK needs an ambassador who can deal with the uniquely unpredictable and temperamental President of the US, not just an FCO box-ticker and lifelong Europhile. The manner in which Darroch was removed was certainly undignified. That doesn’t mean there aren’t potential replacements out there who would actually be much more suitable for the job…
Read Darroch’s resignation letter in full below:
It’s popcorn time again as Trump continues to rip up every page of the diplomatic rulebook in response to the Kim Darroch leaks:
The wacky Ambassador that the U.K. foisted upon the United States is not someone we are thrilled with, a very stupid guy. He should speak to his country, and Prime Minister May, about their failed Brexit negotiation, and not be upset with my criticism of how badly it was…
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2019
….and they are both only getting bigger, better and stronger…..Thank you, Mr. President!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2019
Say what you really think, Donald!
