Patrick Wintour writes:

The resignation of Sir Kim Darroch followed the failure of the probable next prime minister, Boris Johnson, to say he supported him staying in post, despite being given repeated chances to do so during his TV debate on Tuesday night with Jeremy Hunt. As the current Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan put it, by six times refusing to back the ambassador, Johnson had thrown him under a bus.

Without the backing of the US president or his future boss, Darroch naturally concluded he had no future as an interlocutor between London and Washington. He realised, in the words of a friend who spoke to the Guardian, that Johnson had left him no option.

There is now shock and contempt across the Foreign Office and in parliament, not just towards the leaker and Trump but also towards Johnson. Whatever sanctimonious expressions of regret Johnson mouths and however much he blames the leaker, the Foreign Office knows he effectively sacked Darroch, believing he was carrying out the orders of Donald Trump. [Continue reading…]

The New York Times reports:

Ask members of the Washington diplomatic corps about the cables that Sir Kim Darroch, the British ambassador who resigned Wednesday, wrote to London describing the dysfunction and chaos of the Trump administration, and their response is uniform: We wrote the same stuff. [Continue reading…]