Posted on 07/09/2019 5:07:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
London (CNN)Boris Johnson, the favorite to succeed Theresa May as British Prime Minister, has refused to rule out firing the UK ambassador to Washington who provoked the ire of US President Donald Trump.
In a televised debate on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who is standing against Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative party, reiterated his support for Kim Darroch, who was revealed in leaked cables to have criticized Trump as "inept" and "incompetent," among other things. "I will keep [Darroch] until he's due to retire," he said.
Johnson, a former Foreign Secretary, refused to go out on a limb about whether he would decide to keep Darroch on. "I won't be so presumptuous as to assume that I'm going to be in a position to take that," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at edition.cnn.com ...
For those who have said they don’t trust Johnson, this is some evidence he is the real deal.
Why would he rule it out?
Local political realities.
Why hasn’t it happened yet? I thought diplomats were supposed to be diplomatic. He couldn’t even manage that.
Who’d want an ambassador who’s on the president’s s-list? How does that help Britain?
A gotcha question. The question was to put BJ in a corner. If he said he would fire the idiot he would be called cow towing to Trump by not answering he looked like he ducked the question.
Once he has the authority let's see what he does. An ambassador whose actions have caused the severing of lines of communication in the host country has no value to either govermnent.
Can’t the USA declare a diplomat unacceptable (persona non grata) and require him to leave? Why hasn’t this happened?
Well, now that everyone knows that this British diplomat can’t be trusted to be discreet, I’d say he is pretty much useless now.
He REFUSES to rule it out.
IOW he doesn’t want to promise either way. He wants to get elected, then we’ll see.
I think that is reasonable.
Note that he also did NOT promise to keep him either.
Good for Borris
I don’t want the ambassador in my country. Send him home!
Why would Johnson fire him? He’d be perfect for that little consulate in Benghazi.
Pull his visa...done...
Correct. I also suspect as a very few Freepers posted that it was BJ’s group which made the leaks available.
A country (UK) must present a request to the host (US) to give its consent for appointment of a given Ambassador. The host country has the right to not give consent. After the Ambassador has been accepted:
"The 1961 Vienna Treaty on Diplomatic Relations... Article 9 states, "The receiving state may at any time and without having to explain its decision, notify the sending state that the head of the mission or any member of the diplomatic staff of the mission is persona non grata or that any other member of the staff of the mission is not acceptable. In any such case, the sending state shall, as appropriate, either recall the person concerned or terminate his functions with the mission."
Kick Sir Kim's weaselly @$$ out!
So Boris Johnson openly acknowledges that he is not stupid. How shocking. I guess a lot of Brits aren’t interested in that trade deal after all (or in actual diplomacy). Jeremy Hunt would be another failure in the Cameron and May mold.
He didn’t bring it up - others are using it as a way to probe for cracks to attack him with.
He also refuses to say that he'll replace him after his insulting comments about the President.
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