The next British ambassador to the US needs to make his voice “the most important” and to “have a thick skin”, Lord Kim Darroch has said.
Sir Keir Starmer confirmed on Friday that Lord Peter Mandelson has been chosen as the UK’s ambassador in Washington, as US President-elect Donald Trump is set to return to the White House.
Former British ambassador to the US Lord Darroch said life under a Trump presidency will be “like a 24/7 bar-room brawl”.
On the Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme on Sky News, Sir Trevor asked about Lord Mandelson previously calling Mr Trump “amongst other things, a danger to the world and a racist”, and how “one of the president-elect’s team has called him (Lord Mandelson) a moron”.
Lord Darroch said he “wouldn’t take all of this stuff too seriously”, adding he does not think the adviser involved is in Mr Trump’s White House team and that he doubts he “cleared his lines with the president-elect before he tweeted what he did”.
Lord Darroch added: “Second, this is what life is going to be like under Trump 2.0, like a 24/7 bar-room brawl.
“You get this sort of stuff going on all the time, you need to have a thick skin, and you need to manage it and to get through it, to weather it, as it were, so Lord Mandelson is a very experienced politician, I’m sure he can cope with this kind of stuff.”
Asked if the relationship between Mr Trump and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage will “get in the way” for Lord Mandelson, Lord Darroch said: “It’s just going to be part of the landscape.”
He said Farage “has a strong personal relationship with Donald Trump”, adding: “It’s clear that Farage is going to be over in Washington, perhaps more often than he is in Clacton.”
On the role of the new ambassador, Lord Darroch said: “Peter Mandelson will speak for the British Government, and Donald Trump, ultimately, is interested in power, and he will know that Keir Starmer has a huge majority in the British Parliament and is likely to be Prime Minister for the whole of Donald Trump’s second term.
“So I wouldn’t, if I were Mandelson, worry too much about other voices in Donald Trump’s ear, that’s just going to happen.
“What you’ve got to do is make yours the most important voice.”
Lord Darroch said his advice to the next ambassador is to watch out for Mr Trump’s “5am tweet storm”.
He said: “I can’t tell you how often I got woken up at 5am in the morning when I was in Washington… 10am UK time, because Trump wakes up very early and he tweets.
“Those tweets are completely unfiltered Donald Trump, and he will comment on what’s going on around the world, including on things going on in the UK. It was very critical at times, for example, of the way Theresa May was handling Brexit.
“These all get to be instantly big stories in the UK and you need to be prepared for that and just find ways of getting through them, being firm about the British position, being critical if you think that Trump shouldn’t have sent them, and managing them.”
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has named the producer behind The Apprentice, Mark Burnett, as his special envoy to the UK, saying Mr Burnett would bring “a unique blend of diplomatic acumen and international recognition” to the role.
