Sir Kim's comments could be damaging as Trump administration does not forgive, Robert Moore writes

Every senior diplomat dreads this moment: when his or her highly sensitive communications are on newspaper front pages around the world. But this is even worse because the Trump Administration doesn’t do forgiveness, and the attempt to charm the President has been Downing Street’s primary foreign policy goal for the last two and a half years.

Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s Ambassador to the United States, will be furious with the individual who leaked his analysis of President Trump.

In the diplomatic telegrams, handed to The Mail on Sunday, he describes Trump as "inept and dysfunctional", and he assesses that the whole presidency could end in disgrace.

Donald Trump's visit to the UK in June was to build the UK-US relationship. Credit: PA

Of course, that is a view shared by many foreign diplomats in Washington and - frankly - by many who work in the West Wing itself.

We witness such dysfunction here almost every day.

So what Darroch wrote is not even controversial among insiders. But Sir Kim’s timing is uniquely sensitive because the trade damage that is likely to flow from Brexit can only be partly offset if the Anglo-US relationship reaches new heights.

That is what President’s Trump’s state visit to the UK was all about.

In perhaps his most devastating critique of the White House, Darroch is reported to have written to his bosses in London: “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.”

Sir Kim is known to be candid but the Foreign Office says the special relationship can withstand the 'mischievous behaviour' of the leak. Credit: PA

I have known Sir Kim for nearly twenty years, in Washington, London and Brussels.

He plays a straight bat with all his interlocutors, including with journalists.

He is candid and well connected, but - like all British diplomats - he is clearly struggling to navigate Brexit, the most disruptive event for Britain’s standing in the world since 1945.

Now the Trump Administration - and certainly the Brexity parts of the government - will see Sir Kim as fatally compromised.

But the ambassador’s many allies will say he was simply earning his salary: Telling truth to power and calling American politics as he sees it. And if he can’t do that, what on earth is the point of being an Ambassador?