Peter Mandelson has to become ‘most important voice’, says ex-ambassador
Share:
Kim Darroch says Trump’s second term will be ‘like a 24/7 bar-room brawl’ and Mandelson needs ‘thick skin’. Peter Mandelson will need to make his “the most important voice” in Donald Trump’s ear when the US president-elect returns to the White House next month if he is to best represent Britain’s interests with the potentially chaotic administration, one of his predecessors has said.
Kim Darroch, who was the UK’s ambassador to Washington for four years from 2016, said Lord Mandelson would also need “a thick skin” to weather regular attacks such as that by a key Trump campaign adviser calling him an “absolute moron” after his appointment.
The senior diplomat, who resigned from the role in 2019 after leaked communications revealed he called the first administration “inept and insecure”, warned that Trump’s second term would be “like a 24/7 bar-room brawl” – but said Mandelson was an experienced political operator.
Mandelson was confirmed on Friday as the UK’s ambassador to the US, a job that will place him in the frontline of UK-US relations as Trump threatens a global trade war with huge implications for the British economy. Lord Darroch is the most high profile of a number of senior diplomats who have dismissed insults aimed at Mandelson by Trump’s allies, saying he has more than enough experience in the hard world of diplomacy to succeed as ambassador to Washington.
Foreign Office sources rallied to Lord Mandelson’s defence on Saturday after confirmation of his appointment, which prompted Chris LaCivita, a consultant who was one of the main architects of Trump’s presidential campaign, to call him “an absolute moron”.
