Whoever leaked the secret diplomatic cables to Isabel Oakeshott at The Daily Mail presumably intended to damage the remain cause by getting rid of a known pro-EU diplomat serving as our ambassador to the USA. If the leak of the very truthful, if blunt, advice from Sir Kim Darroch was intended to help Boris and the Brexiteer's case it's had the opposite effect. Johnson failed to back Darroch in the debate with Hunt and it was this, according, to James Landale at the BBC, that prompted Darroch to resign yesterday.
I understand that Sir Kim Darroch made his decision to resign after watching @BorisJohnson refuse to support him during last night’s Tory leadership debate— James Landale (@BBCJLandale) July 10, 2019
This created a bit of a Twitter storm with Sir Alan Duncan, a Foreign Office minister himself, on BBC's Politics Live making his anger absolutely clear, accusing Johnson of throwing a career diplomat 'under the bus' to further his own ambitions - which shouldn't surprise anyone. The entire nation will be next.
"Boris Johnson, a former foreign secretary, has basically thrown our top diplomat under the bus"— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 10, 2019
Foreign Office Minister Sir Alan Duncan says many MPs are "very, very angry" about the Tory leadership candidate's "disregard" for Sir Kim Darrochhttps://t.co/LAMJzEu1wx pic.twitter.com/Sazsx5H8RW
Peter Foster at The Telegraph claimed Darroch's resignation was even worse than Sir Ivan Rogers' resignation in 2017 because it damaged the relationship between all our overseas diplomats who know they can no longer rely on their frank views staying confidential, and the government not 'hanging them out to dry' as Johnson did on Tuesday. It sent a very bad message to Foreign Office staff - believe in Brexit or go.
Like Ivan Rogers in 2011, the victim of a political assassination by leaking. This one is even worse, since it cuts the legs off Ambassadors everywhere. At least the Ivan hitjob was limited to leaking U.K.-U.K. internal thinking. The state is now eating itself. https://t.co/UYeUzslyqx— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) July 10, 2019
I heard BoJo being described as 'spineless'. He now looks like he is prepared to accept any humiliation from the
USA, a country with which we desperately want a trade deal. Indeed Robert Peston even suggests that Boris can't afford to rebuke Trump or anyone in The Whitehouse because he needs the FTA or signs of progress towards an agreement (more on this below) so badly. This is what taking back control looks like when the current POTUS is a capricious sociopath.
I think it is also a reminder that trade matters and that he will also surrender
to the EU very soon as well. After all, Europe accounts for three times as much UK trade as the US.
People are also reminding Johnson that he himself, in the 2016 presidential campaign, called Trump 'stupefyingly ignorant' and 'totally unfit' to be President of the USA. This was of course when most people didn't think a moron like Trump would ever get through the primaries' let alone win the election. There is a lot of speculation as to exactly when, as the two of them are side by side in a press conference, a journalist will ask about Johnson's 2016 comments.
I assume afterwards, if Trump asks, he will resign?
Johnson is now furiously back pedalling. He called Sir Kim a 'superb diplomat' and has apparently spoken to him to express regret about his resignation. I bet that was an interesting conversation.
"He is a superb diplomat... whoever leaked his (emails) really has done a grave disservice to our civil servants"— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) July 10, 2019
Boris Johnson says he "regrets" Sir Kim Darroch's resignation, after refusing to say whether he would keep him in post if he becomes PMhttps://t.co/8MUNgd3bZ5 pic.twitter.com/TZQWNL2hCM
All this maneuvering is intended to smooth the path towards a free trade deal with Washington. But how likely are we to get one anytime soon? Yesterday, The Telegraph reported on more leaks, this time from our own Department of International Trade where it's clear that talks aimed at a speedy UK-US FTA after Brexit are in a bit of a mess, mainly because we seem to have no idea what we're doing! The report says:
"Britain has failed to make meaningful progress towards a free trade deal with the United States amid 'chronic' staffing shortages and communication breakdowns in Whitehall, according to a cache of documents seen by The Telegraph.
"Details of meetings spanning two years show how overstretched departments have been working 'at cross purposes' as transatlantic talks have repeatedly stumbled over politically sensitive topics such as rules on health, farming and the finance industry".
You could hardly make this up. We have a perfectly good trade deal with the EU already but we've jettisoned it in favour of another one with the US which at best is a third of the size and we can't actually get to first base because of what The Telegraph say is due to:
"British officials blamed the bureaucratic missteps on of a lack of communication between key trade departments of Business, Energy, Industrial and Strategy, the Department for International Trade, the Foreign Office, the Department for the Environment and Rural Affairs, and the Treasury."
This is important because rather than freeing us to become 'Global Britain' we will be faced with a stark choice, as one senior EU official is quoted as saying:
“The UK has a crucial choice to make in terms of where its own preferences lie, such as on US food standards and the EU regulatory approach to risk,
“How it interacts with the EU will be affected by that choice. In any case UK business exporting to the EU [will need to be] inside the regulatory sphere of EU, irrespective of what model the UK chooses.”
“How it interacts with the EU will be affected by that choice. In any case UK business exporting to the EU [will need to be] inside the regulatory sphere of EU, irrespective of what model the UK chooses.”
It is simply exposing what folly Brexit really is and what a disastrous PM Boris Johnson will be.
