Britain on Monday said it will apologize to the White House after leaked confidential memos revealed its ambassador to the US described the Trump administration as “inept” and “dysfunctional.”
”Contact has been made with the Trump administration, setting out our view that we believe the leak is unacceptable,” a spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters. ”It is, of course, a matter of regret that this has happened.”
Trade Minister Liam Fox said he will apologize directly to President Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, a White House adviser, whom he is expected to meet while in Washington.
“I will be apologizing for the fact that either our civil service or elements of our political class have not lived up to the expectations that either we have or the United States has about their behavior, which in this particular case has lapsed in a most extraordinary and unacceptable way,” he told BBC radio.
Britain also said it has launched an investigation into who leaked the emails from Sir Kim Darroch to the Daily Mail.
“I hope if we can identify the individual, either the full force of internal discipline — or if necessary the law — will be brought to bear because this sort of behavior has no place in public life,” Fox said, adding the leak was “unprofessional, unethical and unpatriotic.”
Darroch, in one of the cables, wrote: “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.”
Trump, speaking to reporters Sunday, said, “We’re not big fans of that man and he has not served the UK well.”
With Wire services