UK diplomat quits

Ambassador to US takes a hike as Trump brands him a ‘fool’

BRITAIN’S ambassador to the US has resigned after being branded a fool and made a diplomatic nobody by President Donald Trump, after the envoy’s unflattering opinions about the US administration were leaked.

Clouds gathered over the trans-Atlantic relationship as veteran diplomat Sir Kim Darroch said he could no longer do his job after Mr Trump cut all contact with the representative of one of America’s closest allies.

The break in relations followed the publication of leaked documents that revealed Sir Kim’s dim view of Mr Trump’s “dysfunctional”, “inept” and “chaotic” administration.

“The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like,” Sir Kim said in his resignation letter. He had been due to leave his post at the end of the year.

In the documents, he called the Trump administration’s Iran policy “incoherent”, said Mr Trump might be indebted to “dodgy Russians”, and raised doubts about whether the White House “will ever look competent”.

“We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept,” one missive said.

Prime Minister Theresa May and other British politicians praised Sir Kim, condemned the leak – and criticised Mr Trump’s intemperate comments, if only implicitly.

Pointedly, however, Boris Johnson, the frontrunner to replace Mrs May as PM, did not defend the ambassador after Mr Trump’s tirade.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Mr Johnson’s rival for the post, said it was “absolutely essential that when our diplomats do their job all over the world … we defend them.”

Mr Hunt also criticised Mr Trump’s verbal attacks on journalists.