The news that the new American Ambassador to the UK has chosen to make some critical comments in public about our nations policies implies that at best he is new to the role of Ambassador. Perhaps his interview with Con Coughlin of the Telegraph newspaper was one of his first since his appointment and perhaps he has misunderstood the role he has taken on. There are numerous reflections on the interview as a whole including this one in Politico. On the other hand perhaps he is doing exactly what the President has asked him to do, to be a mouthpiece for Trump and to ignore the niceties of traditional diplomacy. His comments that we need to spend more of our limited budget on military defence and aggression provision may be precisely what his predecessors used to say, the difference being they would have said it to the Minister of Defence or the Prime Minister behind closed doors. Not to a journalist for the public’s attention. Of course at times when security is at its most critical, we are more tuned to such matters as defence, but the fact is that the amount we spend on bombing other nations is not actually a very tactful matter to raise in such an environment. A better line to have taken as a responsible Ambassador, particularly one whose estimated $4.2Bn wealth and apparent business experience comes from helping to run a family business that provides talcum powder to help reduce inflammation and soothe potential sores, would be to point out that there is a strategy being adopted for nations such as Iran and North Korea behind the scenes to compensate for the brash, uncensored tweets of his boss. However telling us to spend more on (amongst other matters) nuclear weapons is pretty tactless. To applaud our nation for leaving the EU just at the point when the majority of people are opposed to such a move and the costs are beginning to emerge is also pretty tactless. Finally to speak about the value in some sort of as yet undefined trade deal as being a source for jobs, jobs, jobs in both the UK and US is a failure to understand that our borders are the source of much of our labour (he does refer to the need to close our borders) and the sense that as his big boss makes clear, their priority is to make the US great again, at the expense of all other nations on the earth. This presumably means that the intention of breaking down our resistance to importing American chlorine washed chicken will be high on his list. Thankfully he worked out that mentioning that would not have been a good strategy. Even the Telegraph has identified he is not trained as a diplomat, nor suited as a politician, they have placed the following caption under the photo above: “Mr Johnson, like Mr Trump, is a successful businessman”

The inability of Mr Johnson and his boss Mr Trump to follow the vestiges of diplomatic protocol will come as no great surprise to one of Americas biggest fans, Daniel Hannan who is currently one of my MEPs. He writes in yesterdays Washington Examiner arguing in favour of national sovereignty but in a way that points out that not all sovereign thinking and actions are legitimate: “It is true that the U.S., like all great powers, sometimes violates the principle of national independence. It has sponsored regime change abroad. It has launched invasions. Indeed, the logic that President Trump uses to threaten North Korea — that a preemptive strike might be an act of self-defense — would equally justify a pre-emptive North Korean strike against the U.S. State sovereignty, as I say, does not solve all our problems.”