The Times Magazine 23‘WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM. THERE’S BEEN A LEAK.’
My chief of staff, poised in the doorway
to my office, looked anxious. It was Friday,
July 5, 2019, the day after US Independence
Day: the embassy was half empty. And it
was a typical summer’s day in the Swamp:
hot, humid, soupy.
The Mail on Sunday had tipped off one of
the foreign secretary’s special advisers that
they had a stash of communications from
the Washington embassy to Whitehall.
Copies of the leaked texts were handed
around. The three documents we had
identified were diptels – diplomatic
telegrams, in Foreign Office jargon – from
the previous three weeks. These were
sensitive but I reckoned the blowback
should be manageable. The remaining text
was a confidential letter from me to Mark
Sedwill, cabinet secretary and national
security adviser, dating back to mid-2017.
This had been written as input for a top-
level discussion of UK-US relations, some
six months into the new US administration.
My mood sank. This was really bad.
When I wrote that letter in 2017,
I had known what was required: a frank,
unvarnished assessment of the Trump
administration.
Around 5pm Washington time, the first
Mail on Sunday article landed in my email
inbox. And the reality looked, well, terrible.
On the front page they had highlighted the
criticisms – words like “inept” and “deeply
dysfunctional” – together with the comment
that the administration, already mired in
scandal, could be at the beginning of a
downward spiral leading to disgrace. I had
said that the president “radiated insecurity”.
“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.”
By Sunday morning the story was
leading most of the US news channels and
spiralling across social media. I got a mid-
morning phone call from my wife, Vanessa,
who sounded shocked. She said she had
been woken by her mother at 7am with the
words: “You have to come and look at the
television! Kim is all over the news.”
The president landed on the White
House lawn late that Sunday afternoon.
The press corps were waiting to fire
questions at him. And inevitably, one
of the first was about his reactions to the
leaks of my report. The president said,
“The ambassador has not served the UKwell. We are not big fans of that man.” My
immediate thought was that, if this was it,
it was survivable.
But I had always expected it to be
a reckoning by Twitter, and so it proved.
On Monday morning, the president tweeted,
“I do not know the ambassador, but he is
not liked or well thought of within the US.
We will no longer deal with him.” It flashed
instantly through my mind that it was all
over. But I didn’t, at that moment, pursue
the thought: with new information coming
on stream at every moment, there was no
space to think things through.
Liam Fox, the secretary of state for
international trade, arrived in Washington
that afternoon on a long-scheduled visit.
I was due to accompany him on most of
his calls the following day. I was also due
to attend a dinner at the US Treasury that
evening in honour of the ruler of Qatar.
Tuesday started ominously. I was told
that Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin
wanted to speak on the telephone. The lie
of the land could not have been clearer if
someone had taped a “get lost” message to a
brick and thrown it through a window of the
residence. I phoned Mnuchin mid-morning.
Sounding understandably uncomfortable, he
said that it would be inappropriate for me to
attend the Qatari dinner.
In the UK there had been a televised
debate between the two remaining
candidates for the succession to Theresa
May, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt and
Boris Johnson. Hunt had volunteered
strong support for me – “If I become
prime minister, Darroch stays” – and
challenged his opponent to make the same
commitment. Johnson ducked and weaved
and argued that this was not something that
should be debated in public.
On the spur of the moment, I invited
the team over for a casual supper. I said to
them: “Given what the president has said,
do you think I can now actually do the job
of ambassador?” We kicked the arguments
around for a while without resolution,
though inside, my own views were
hardening. But I knew there was someone
more important I had to consult before
reaching a decision, even though it was
approaching 3am in the UK. I excused
myself and went to phone Vanessa. n© Sir Kim Darroch 2020. Extracted from
Collateral Damage: Britain, America and
Europe in the Age of Trump, published by
William Collins on September 17 at £20recognised him in the street. Another time,
Johnson pocketed a hotel teabag and whipped
it out at a reception with the American
Chamber of Commerce, “Proof, the Boston
Tea Party notwithstanding, the British were
still big in that town.” His entourage too was
“colourful”. Late one night, a Johnson press
person came back in high spirits and, after
a problem with his key, attempted to break
into the ambassador’s residence via a flat roof.
He was spotted on CCTV, apprehended by
security and escorted to his room, where he
vomited all over the carpet.
On these visits, Sir Kim observed how
“fascinated” Johnson seemed by Trump. He
was particularly “intrigued” by Trump’s use
of language. “The limited vocabulary, the
simplicity of the messaging, the disdain for
political correctness, the sometimes incendiary
imagery, and the at best intermittent
relationship with facts and the truth,” Sir Kim
writes. Did it rub off, I ask. “From what I hear
from colleagues,” he says, “this government
pays a lot of attention to presentation, to
language. But if you go back through the
current prime minister’s history, he’s often said
quite striking things. And he never apologises.
So, Boris might have done this anyway, but
certainly, having watched Trump in action,
he wouldn’t have been put off.” Elsewhere
he relates that Johnson was warm to former
White House strategist Steve Bannon. They
exchanged numbers and email addresses in an
exercise of “relationship-building for the future”.
Meanwhile, embassy life was full pelt. He
and Vanessa (who held down her job as a
teacher) hosted 800 receptions a year. Their
British chef rustled up bacon and eggs for
breakfast, salad lunches (“Washington is very
Democrat, very woke”). They had Wimbledon
receptions (guests, because of the time
difference, drank Pimm’s at 8am) and parties
for the press corps that got messy. How did
they cope? “Resident staff,” he confides,
“refilled other glasses but not mine.”
Among their regular guests were Trump
press secretaries: Sean Spicer, Anthony
Scaramucci, Sarah Huckabee Saunders, all
of whom the ambassador liked away from
the White House podium. Kellyanne Conway,
senior White House adviser and arguably
Trump’s biggest cheerleader, was also “great
fun” off camera: “She was always on the
dancefloor at our New Year’s Eve party.” What
does he think about Conway’s resignation?
“I was a bit surprised about the timing, just
before the Republican convention,” he says.
“She has four children, so the reference to her
leaving for family reasons kind of rings true.”
He points me to her 15-year-old daughter,
Claudia, saying, “She’s somewhat critical of
Kellyanne’s boss, as you’ll notice.” (No kidding.
She has tweeted: “There is no one who hates
Trump more than me [heart-eyes emoji].”)
Trump tweeted, ‘The ambassador is not well liked
within the US. We will no longer deal with him’
KIM DARROCH: IN HIS OWN WORDS