British trade minister to apologize to Ivanka Trump over leaked cables

Britain’s trade minister will reportedly apologize to President Trump’s daughter and senior White House adviser Ivanka Trump after leaked memos revealed a British ambassador describing the administration as “dysfunctional” and “inept.”

The memos from British Ambassador to the U.S. Kim Darroch, leaked over the weekend to a British newspaper, showed that he made disparaging remarks about President Trump in a series of official diplomatic cables dating back to 2017.

{mosads}Reuters reports that British trade minister Liam Fox said he will apologize on behalf of the British government in person to Ivanka Trump during his current visit to 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,” Fox said on BBC radio.

He added that “malicious leaks” such as the one that exposed Darroch’s remarks “can actually lead to damage to that relationship, which can therefore affect our wider security interest.”

Darroch, in the leaked comments, was highly critical of what he called instability in the Trump administration.

“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,” Darroch wrote in one memo.

It is unclear if the leaked cables mentioned Ivanka Trump specifically.

A spokesperson for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office defended Darroch on Saturday in a statement.

“Their views are not necessarily the views of ministers or indeed the government. But we pay them to be candid. Just as the U.S. Ambassador here will send back his reading of Westminster politics and personalities,” the statement read.

The president on Sunday responded to the reports of Darroch’s remarks, telling reporters that “we are not big fans of that man and he has not served the U.K. well, so I can understand and I can say things about him but I won’t bother,” according to Reuters.