Senior diplomats have dismissed insults aimed at Peter Mandelson by allies of Donald Trump, saying he has more than enough experience in the hard world of diplomacy to succeed as ambassador to Washington.
Foreign Office sources rallied to Lord Mandelson’s defence on Saturday after confirmation of his appointment, which prompted a Trump campaign adviser to call him “an absolute moron”.
Mandelson was confirmed on Friday as the UK’s ambassador to the US, a job which will place him in the front line of UK-US relations as Trump threatens a global trade war with huge potential implications for the British economy.
Chris LaCivita, a consultant who was one of the main architects of Trump’s presidential campaign, reacted to news of Mandelson’s appointment with a furious post on X taking umbrage with comments that the former EU trade commissioner had made about the president-elect. “This UK govt is special,” he wrote. “Replace a professional universally respected Ambo with an absolute moron – he should stay home ! SAD! Mandelson described Trump as a danger to the world and ‘little short of a white nationalist’.”
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But a senior diplomat said that LaCivita was unlikely to reflect the new president’s views. “LaCivita is a campaign strategist. He’s not, as far as I know, a current aide or adviser, and won’t be in the Trump White House,” the diplomat said.
“With the election long over, he’s finished. There’s no reason to think he has cleared his lines with the president-elect – he’s speaking for himself.
“ Mandelson will need to be thick-skinned. This is what life under a Trump presidency is like. Stuff flies around. Look at the alternate president, Elon Musk, saying the UK is a ‘tyrannical police state’. I’m sure Mandelson, given his breadth of experience, anticipated this and can cope.”
As a former EU trade commissioner and UK secretary of state for trade, Mandelson’s CV is evidence of his experience at the top of government under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and as a high-level official in Brussels when the UK was still in the single market.
LaCivita was referring to Karen Pierce, the UK’s ambassador in Washington since 2020. She has been credited with masterminding the new government’s efforts to develop links with the Trump camp in the run-up to the US elections last month. Her four-year posting will end in January, and the career diplomat is widely seen to have done a good job, sparkling at parties on the lawns of the British embassy.
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LaCivita, a former US marine, may have been impressed by Pierce’s charm offensive, but he does not seem to extend much goodwill to the new Labour government. When it was put about, in the days before the UK general election in July, that Labour had been in contact with Trump’s campaign on a “daily basis”, he responded on X by saying: “FAKE news apparently on the other side of the pond as well. Other than a 10 min perfunctory meeting there is no contact.”
Then in October, he responded to news that Labour staff were campaigning for Kamala Harris by posting: “The British are coming !The British are coming ! Can you say election interference !!???”
If LaCivita does end up playing a role in Trump’s administration then Mandelson can point to more temperate comments he has made about Trump. And he can also remind LaCivita, and the president, that he was endorsed as a “viable candidate” and an “intelligent figure who knows his brief well” and whose “intellect would at least command respect” in the US. The endorser? Nigel Farage.
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