Ousting Starmer would be a bad look overseas, former UK Ambassador to the US Sir Kim Darroch tells LBC
Speaking to LBC's Tonight with Andrew Marr, Sir Kim Darroch said that he feared that Starmer being removed from office would risk the UK's reputation being impacted abroad.He told Andrew: "We'll see how [Starmer's] relationship with Donald Trump recovers from the recent clashes, which are pretty one-sided. It's Trump throwing insults across the Atlantic.But more generally, it's just a reality... that two things make an impression on the rest of the world."One is how well your economy is doing, and the second is how stable your government is. How solid it looks.
"Because if it looks like it might collapse next week, they're really not interested in hearing your views on anything because who knows what you'll be saying the week after next."Pointing to his experience as Ambassador to the US during the years of Brexit negotiations, Sir Kim advised: "We had the most appalling chaos during the whole Brexit thing. I was in Washington during all those years of chaos and parliamentary things happening... that hadn't happened before and that stuff. And we looked terrible."If we change Prime Minister yet again soon, we will look as if we were back in those days when we got through how many Tory Prime Ministers in about three or four years?"Sir Keir Starmer is under increasing pressure over his handling of the appointment of Lord Mandelson as US Ambassador in 2025.Sacked top Foreign Office civil servant Sir Olly Robbins accused Downing Street of pressuring the department over the appointment so much that they felt compelled to override concerns raised by the UK Security Vetting agency.Sir Kim, who worked with Sir Olly while he was the UK's National Security Advisor, said that his former deputy was a "very truthful guy".He added: "And it's true that Olly didn't tell the Prime Minister [that Mandelson had not been recommended to be security cleared] but he explained at length in the appearance for the Select Committee why that's the case. And those rules may look eccentric, but they're there for a reason."
