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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics Podcast.

I'm Isabel Hardman and I'm joined by Katie Balls and James Forsyth.

We've got a big row this morning about a leak of some comments from the British ambassador to the US, Kim Darrock, where he describes the White House as being dysfunctional.

James, how is this going down in Washington?

I think it is fair to say that Donald Trump, who's never had the thickest skin and taking criticism in the best way, is not very happy.

He has said that Kim Darrick for the US Amassas, Washington does a bad job and he's not doing the UK any favours.

It is quite clear that this is, you know, this is another obstacle to dealing with President Trump

in that he is now taken even more firmly against the British Ambassador to Washington.

I think the fascinating question about this is what the memos say are not that surprising.

I don't think anyone thought that the British Ambassador to Washington was writing back to London

saying, oh, this White House, it runs like clockwork. There are no disputes over policy.

We know that this is a White House. Trump says things about how things happen in his White House that you can't imagine a previous president saying that, for example, oh, I was going to authorise this strike on Iran and then I asked them how many casualties it would be.

And when they told me, having previously said yes, I then said no.

And that's not something you can imagine many other previous presidents saying. He says of his national security adviser John Bolton that he wants to go to

war of everybody. Again, not something that people normally say about people who they appoint to

serve in their governments. So I think there is a delicate diplomatic challenge for the UK now,

which is the UK government isn't going to want to sack the ambassador

to Washington or shuffle him off to another job straight away, because that would look like

you were saying, please don't send back what you really think is going on because we can't

keep the communications secure at our end. And that would be devastating to the whole idea of having a diplomatic network.

But at the same time, they will know that the British ambassador to Washington is the most important posting in the UK diplomatic service.

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