Trump team warns Starmer’s ‘horrible, arrogant’ ambassador pick means Britain will be ‘locked out’ of key discussions
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President-elect’s team deeply unhappy at Starmer’s choice for Britain’s new top diplomat. Peter Mandelson’s nomination as Britain’s new ambassador to the United States has provoked fury within Donald Trump’s team, with one insider calling it a “horrible, arrogant” choice and his campaign coordinator publicly calling the Labour peer a “moron.”.
![[Trump’s team arelikely to lock Mandelson out of discussions, it has been claimed]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/20/16/cb8cc965700343d5a040c90c44db220a.jpg)
The choice of the former EU commissioner and Blair-era minister, who previously attacked Trump as “little short of a white nationalist and racist”, prompted a warning that Britain will be “locked out of the most important discussions” with the president-elect’s team because of a lack of trust.
![[Former diplomat Lord Darroch of Kew (House of Lords/PA)]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/09/23/6f505353700434f0eba90a1b233c0959Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzMxMjc5ODg5-2.57336563.jpg)
Lord Mandelson’s appointment to Washington means the three people charged with building relations with the incoming administration have all insulted Trump: foreign secretary David Lammy once tweeted that Trump is a “tyrant” and “a woman-hating, neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”, while foreign minister Stephen Doughty organised a 2017 petition to stop Trump addressing a joint sitting of parliament.
Mandelson described Trump as “a danger to the world” and attacked his anti-China stance, claiming it put international free trade “at risk”. Sources in Trump’s team expressed concern about Mandelson’s ties to Beijing and the EU, and noted his close links to the disgraced tycoon and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
