Tory frontrunner says former US envoy confirmed TV debate was a factor in his resignation

Boris Johnson belatedly admitted to failures in his handling of the leaked cables issue that led to the resignation of a British diplomat as he came under intense political pressure on Friday.

In a tense interview on the BBC, the would-be prime minister acknowledged that his refusal to explicitly back Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s outgoing ambassador to Washington, amid a diplomatic row had been a factor in the envoy’s decision to step down. But he insisted that his remarks had been misrepresented to Darroch.

In a Tory leadership hustings that took place at about the same time as the prerecorded interview was being broadcast, Johnson admitted he should have handled the situation differently, as he was heckled by an audience member who demanded that he “answer the bloody question”.

Johnson had declined repeated opportunities during a televised debate on Tuesday to explicitly back Darroch, an act he told the BBC had been a “factor” in the envoy’s decision to resign. He later told the hustings audience, however: “I don’t think that anything I said was actually decisive in Kim’s decision to resign. Had I my time again, to answer your question directly, yes – I probably should have been more emphatic that Kim personally had my full support.”

Even as he acknowledged his impact, Johnson robustly defended his role. He told the BBC his remarks in the hustings had only been “relayed” to the ambassador and that they had been “misrepresented”.

Darroch, he claimed, had not seen the debate himself and, after hearing the second-hand report of the remarks, decided to resign from one of the UK’s most prestigious foreign postings without watching the broadcast.

Darroch quit his post on Wednesday, after Donald Trump publicly expressed his fury about a series of highly critical reports that had been leaked to the Mail on Sunday.

Q&A What did Sir Kim Darroch write about Trump in the cables? Show Hide In the cables allegedly leaked to the Mail on Sunday, the UK’s outgoing ambassador to Washington, Sir Kim Darroch told his bosses in London that: He did not believe the Trump administration would “become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept”.

Trump may have been indebted to “dodgy Russians”.

There were bitter divisions within the Trump White House, saying euphemistically that administration officials would get into “knife fights”.

The Trump presidency could “crash and burn” and that “we could be at the beginning of a downward spiral ... that leads to disgrace and downfall”.

The US president’s approach to global trade could wreck the system on which it depends.

Trump could attack Iran, and that he abandoned the Iran nuclear deal as an act of 'diplomatic vandalism' to spite Barack Obama.

The White House was split over the withdrawal, and lacked a "day-after" plan for what might come next.

Johnson, challenged repeatedly about the issue in the interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil on Friday, denied that he failed to support Darroch in Tuesday’s ill-tempered ITV leadership debate.

“I stood up completely for the principle that civil servants should be allowed to say what they want for their political masters without fear or favour,” he said, adding: “The real culprits are the people who leaked that material.”

He said: “I spoke to him [Darroch] the next day and said how sorry I was that he had resigned, and he said he had not watched it,” Johnson said.

But he added: “What he said was that somebody had relayed to him what I had said. He said that what somebody had relayed to him had certainly been a factor in his resignation. I think, unfortunately, what I said during that TV debate was misrepresented to Kim.”

Johnson also denied being “craven” towards the US president, and claimed that in the debate he had simply been rejecting the idea that Darroch’s career should be made into a “political football”.

During Tuesday’s debate, when asked to confirm that he would keep Darroch in post if he became prime minister, Johnson declined to do so, saying it would be “presumptuous”.

By contrast, his rival, Jeremy Hunt, said: “Who chooses our ambassadors is a matter for the United Kingdom government and the United Kingdom prime minister, so I’ve made clear that if I am our next prime minister, the ambassador in Washington stays.”

Friends of the former ambassador have cited the perceived lack of support from Johnson as one reason he took the dramatic step of resigning the next day. The Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan said Johnson had, “thrown our top diplomat under a bus”.

Darroch’s resignation was greeted with dismay at the Foreign Office, where Johnson’s stance was viewed as a failure to stand up to the maverick US president, who had called the ambassador “wacky” and a “pompous fool” on Twitter.

Profile Sir Kim Darroch Show Hide Born in County Durham in 1954, Sir Nigel Kim Darroch graduated with a degree in zoology from Durham University after attending Abingdon school on a scholarship. Tall and gregarious, he was nicknamed “Kimbo” at the Foreign Office, where he began his civil service career in 1977 and climbed the ranks of diplomacy in postings from Japan to Italy. He entered the public eye when he was frequently seen at Cameron’s side as his national security adviser from 2012 to 2015, joining him on trips to war zones, and chairing meetings on international crises, from Russian aggression in Ukraine to the collapse of the Libyan government. But it is his roles prior to that, as Blair’s top adviser on Europe, and as the permanent representative to the EU under Brown, that led to his vilification by Conservative Brexit supporters, who regard him as an arch Europhile. In January 2016 he took up the role of HM ambassador to the United States. Despite having been appointed when Hillary Clinton was thought likely to win the presidency, Darroch threw himself into courting Trump’s inner circle, “flooding the zone” of people in Trump’s orbit, hoping to gain influence through showing up and cultivating contacts. He also worked hard to court well-connected American journalists so he could benefit from their insights. In July 2019, Darroch resigned as ambassador, after a series of leaked diplomatic messages revealed that he had described the administration as "inept" and "clumsy". This led to a vocal Twitter outburst from Trump. Darroch could never have imagined that his distinguished 40-year diplomatic career would end with a US president publicly volleying insults his way, calling him “a very stupid guy”, “wacky” and “pompous fool”. Rowena Mason in London and David Smith in Washington Photograph: Niall Carson/PA

The department’s permanent secretary, Sir Simon McDonald, told MPs he believed the incident was unprecedented.

In his own interview with Neil, Hunt said he “expects” Brexit to be completed by Christmas.

Throughout the campaign, Hunt has carefully avoided echoing Johnson’s pledge to take Britain out of the EU by the 31 October deadline “come what may” – though he claims his background as an entrepreneur will help him to strike a new compromise with the EU27. He insisted on Friday: “I’m being honest with people.”

Hunt also hinted that he acknowledged the flamboyant Johnson was more attractive to many of the 160,000 grassroots Tory members who are selecting Britain’s next prime minister in a postal ballot.

He said his worry was that Conservative members would “vote with their hearts instead of their heads”.

The result of the hard-fought contest, which began with a field of 13 candidates more than a month ago, will be announced on 23 July. Theresa May will take part in her final prime minister’s questions the next day, before going to Buckingham Palace to tender her resignation to the Queen.

May also gave an interview to the BBC on Friday, reflecting on her troubled three years in Downing Street. The prime minister said when she left No 10, she expected to feel “a mixture of pride at having done the job. But also a degree of disappointment because there was more that I wanted to do.”

She said she had been surprised by the challenge of persuading MPs to back the withdrawal agreement, which she continued to insist was a “good deal”.

Asked what she might do differently if she had her chance again, May said: “One could always look back and say, ‘If I’d sat down and talked to people more often.’” She also admitted that there had been mistakes in the 2017 “strong and stable” general election campaign, which resulted in the Tories losing their majority.

“I regret running a campaign that wasn’t really me,” she said – and she conceded: “I probably actually should have done the TV debates.”

She was widely criticised at the time for ducking scrutiny by failing to take part in televised debates with her rivals – something Jeremy Corbyn was able to capitalise on by joining the fray himself.

However, May insisted that she still did not regret triggering the snap election in the first place.