New U.K. foreign ministers were heavily critical of the ‘racist’ former U.S. president before landing plum government jobs, while Trump is a man who “knows how to hold a grudge”, Politico writes.
As noted, Britain’s newly-installed team of top diplomats will be praying he’s prepared “to forgive and forget” if he wins back the U.S. presidency on Nov. 5. A study of past comments by the U.K.’s new Foreign Office team shows a host of top ministers have made deeply critical comments about Trump over recent years, calling him “America’s Hitler”, “moral disaster”, “neo-Nazi sympathizing sociopath”, etc. Allies of Trump may not forget the digs so easily should he win.
Trump’s last U.S. Ambassador to the U.K., Woody Johnson, recently said that “people will remember all those comments” which were not “wise.”
“Donald Trump is an unusual politician and his, at times, emotive rhetoric and political choices attracted responses from other political leaders that were quite unusual in diplomatic terms,” Sophia Gaston, the head of foreign policy and U.K. resilience at the Policy Exchange think tank, said.
According to her, words really do matter when it comes to politics, because those personal relationships can be really important.
No wonder U.K. Labour officials have spent recent months scrambling to build bridges with the Trump camp. Plans to appoint a new U.K. Ambassador to Washington have been put on ice pending the outcome of the Nov. 5 election.
A U.K. Foreign Office spokesperson said: “The U.K.-U.S. relationship is special, built on a foundation of our deep security, military and intelligence links, as well as our unique cultural and people-to-people ties. We look forward to working closely with whoever is elected the next U.S. president.”
