22 The Times Magazineord Darroch of Kew is surveying his
garden in Richmond. There are pink
geraniums and Japanese anemone,
crocosmia and pots of tomatoes and
squash. The lawn is lined, mantis-
green, bowling club-even. Come
autumn, he will divide the beds.
But Sir Kim, 66, has not spent
the year since his inflamed exit as
UK ambassador to the United States
just gardening. Good grief, no. He’s spent it
penning a book about his final five days in the
Foreign Office, writing in a tearing fury about
the “monster” experience, “The worst of my
life. Like being trapped in a nightmare.”
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a more brutal
ending to such an unblemished 42-year career- a career that included posts such as national
security adviser to David Cameron and
ambassador to the European Union – than
having Donald Trump, the US president,
call you “the wacky ambassador”, “pompous”,
“a very stupid guy”. It’s hard to imagine the
indignity of Britain’s most senior foreign
diplomat having to pull out of a meeting with
Trump’s daughter Ivanka for fear of being
blocked by security at the White House gates.
Or watching in horror as his name dominated
the news from Saturday, July 6, 2019, until he
resigned on Wednesday, July 10. “Time heals
and softens,” he sighs now. But he felt real
anger, remorse, “existential bitterness” back
then. “It was out of body, like watching a film.”
Or being in a bad episode of The West Wing.
To recap: the crisis in UK-US relations was
triggered by a leak to a Sunday tabloid of a
cache of classified Foreign Office cables and
correspondence, including a report on the
Trump administration written by Sir Kim in
- It was never intended to be made public
(until declassified in 2047). Instead, under
the headline “Britain’s man in US says
Trump is ‘inept’ ” were his bald descriptions
of the president. Sir Kim used words like
“dysfunctional” and “unpredictable”. He
compared Trump to the Eighties cyborg
assassin the Terminator. On one level, all the
leak revealed was the ugly contradiction at
the heart of embassy diplomacy everywhere.
Ambassadors have for ever used the polite
gloss of social occasions, flutes, canapés
and small talk to gather acid assessments to
telegraph back to offices deep in Whitehall.
On another, it played into the hands of the
populist narrative that anyone against Trump
was somehow against Brexit and the will of
the people.
Today, the former ambassador is relaxed.
He invites me to ask “whatever you like”.
(Were you a spook? “No, I wasn’t. Hmmm.”)
Perhaps his Zen-like attitude comes from the
yoga classes he’s been doing on Zoom. It’s in
stark contrast to the world he inhabited until
last year: a lifetime of having his ear pressed
close to the government’s secrets, of playing
confidant to the occupants of both No 10 and
the White House.
His book, Collateral Damage, records
the pressure inside the British embassy in
Washington before and after his decision to
resign. I tell him I like the image he conjures
up of his phone lying on his desk showing the
desperate missed calls from a guilt-ridden
Boris Johnson. He laughs. “Yes. I called back
and he answered immediately. He sounded
just like Boris Johnson sounds – starting and
then restarting sentences. Very Boris. He said,
‘But why did you resign? Wouldn’t it all have
blown over after a few weeks?’ ”
Johnson wanted to know if Sir Kim’s
resignation was his fault. In part it was, Sir
Kim replied. Johnson seemed taken aback.
It had “absolutely not” been his “intention”,
he said, to throw Sir Kim under a bus with
remarks he’d made during a televised debate
for the Tory leadership contest. And if Sir Kim
had been given that impression, then Johnson’s
views had been misrepresented to him.
The previous evening, Sir Kim had been
shown a video clip of Johnson answering a
question about him: would he, Johnson, if he
became prime minister, keep on the current
UK ambassador to Washington? Until this
moment, the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office (FCO) had told Sir Kim to hang tight.
The official line was to offer him unequivocal
support and attack the leak as a breach of
the Official Secrets Act: “Ambassadors are
paid to be candid and offer an unvarnished
assessment,” a spokesman said. Jeremy Hunt,
foreign secretary and Johnson’s leadership
rival, echoed this line. But here was Johnson
stalling. At first, he evaded the question of Sir
Kim’s future, and then failed to back him.
While the clip played, Sir Kim was handed
printouts of the front pages: “I won’t deal
with British ambassador, says Trump”. On the
phone was a political editor asking if he was
“going to fall on [his] sword”. This tight series
of events brought Sir Kim’s swirling thoughts
into sharp focus. He called his wife, Vanessa,
who was with her mother in Norfolk. Then
he set his alarm for 3am Washington time
(8am in London), when he would tender his
resignation. After the deed, he watched the
scrolling updates on TV news bulletins.
So, I ask, was Boris Johnson lying that day
on the phone? “I don’t instantly disbelieve him,”
Sir Kim says, employing a textbook diplomatic
double negative. His excuse that he’d been
misrepresented “is not a crazy explanation”.
Others, including Vanessa and their daughter,
Georgina, think Johnson was trying to suck up
to Trump. “They tell me that my view is too
generous,” Sir Kim says. Although there was
“a certain tension” in his call with Johnson,
“Our parting words were amicable.”
The real object of his ire is the personwho leaked and has yet to be unmasked,
but will almost certainly be jailed if he or
she is. It’s hard for some to understand the
severity of the crime, but Sir Kim believes it
has already changed the way ambassadors’
cables are written, which in itself is “a very
dangerous thing”.
“Let’s be clear about this,” he says. “If you
have to write very confidential stuff that goes
to a handful of people in some sort of code,
because you are worried that one of your
colleagues is going to leak, then that’s really
quite concerning.”
Sometimes he imagines sitting at a prison
visitor’s table, looking the leaker in the eye,
“and not saying, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ at all,
but just one question: ‘Why? What was the
motivation?’ That’s what fascinates me. ‘Did
you think I was being too critical of the
president? Or some other reason?’ ”
He has theories: that a mandarin thought
there was too much negative “bias” in his
reporting on the US administration. Or that
there was a political motive, “To ensure my
successor was a Trump sympathiser – and
perhaps a politician rather than a diplomat.”
Most sinister is the fear that “some malign
outside force” had hacked the government.
Sir Kim knew Johnson decades ago
when the latter was a young Brussels
correspondent and Sir Kim was a young
FCO press spokesman. More recently,
Johnson made visits to Washington as foreign
secretary. Sir Kim relates how he’d jump into
the new ambassadorial Bentley and burn
around the embassy compound. How he’d
take selfies with holidaying Brits whoL
JOHNSON ASKED IF
THE RESIGNATION WAS
HIS FAULT. IN PART IT
WAS, SIR KIM REPLIED
With Boris Johnson, then foreign secretary, in Washington, 2017PREVIOUS SPREAD: TWITTER.COM/KIMDARROCH. THIS SPREAD: SHUTTERSTOCK