What envoy's downfall tells us about UK-US relations

The resignation of Britain’s ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch, after President Donald Trump called him a “pompous fool” on Twitter, marks a new low in the post-war Anglo-American relationship. But the episode reveals less about a single diplomatic spat than about the structural weakness of both countries’ politics and the grim prospects for a UK-US trade deal after Brexit.

How a diplomat did his job and got hounded out

Sir Kim Darroch’s private diplomatic cables, leaked to the Daily Mail, described the Trump administration as “dysfunctional,” “clumsy,” and “inept.” That is standard fare for confidential reporting. As Edward Luce, the FT’s US national editor, notes, American ambassadors have said far harsher things about host governments in leaked cables. The real breach was the leak itself, not the content. Trump’s reaction—tweeting that he would “no longer deal with” Darroch and that the ambassador was a “warmongering fool”—was unprecedented for a president targeting a close ally’s envoy.

What shocked Washington, Luce says, was not the insult but the scale. “They know that Trump met Darroch many times, and then when Trump tweets out that he’s never met him, that’s false.” The broader diplomatic community felt genuine embarrassment. “It’s a different scale when it’s done to a close ally than when Trump is knocking a domestic player.”