Nigel Farage has called for Britain's ambassador to the US to be sacked after it was claimed he had described Donald Trump's White House as 'uniquely dysfunctional' and 'inept'.

Leaked memos obtained by the Mail on Sunday detail Sir Kim Darroch's assessments of the Trump administration from 2017 to the present.

The publication of the comments is likely to spark a fresh diplomatic row between London and Washington and risks causing the government and the Foreign Office major embarrassment.

The emergence of the remarks come just weeks after the UK rolled out the red carpet for Mr Trump during his state visit at the start of June.

Mr Farage, the leader of The Brexit Party and a friend of Mr Trump, said the comments showed Britain needed a new representative in the US.

He told MailOnline: 'From the moment Trump was elected this man was the wrong person to be the British ambassador - a globalist in outlook, totally opposed to the Trump doctrine.

'The comments are wholly unsurprising but for him to speculate about Trump's alleged involvement with Russia shows him to be totally unsuitable for the job and the sooner he is gone the better.'

The Foreign Office announced this afternoon that it had launched a formal leak investigation.

Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said of the leaked memos: 'This was a personal view. It's not the view of the British government. It's not my view.'

Dominic Raab, the former Brexit secretary, suggested the comments made by Sir Kim were 'unwise' but David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, said the leak was 'disgraceful'.

Nigel Farage has called for Sir Kim Darroch to be replaced over his frank assessment of the state of the Trump White House

Leaked memos showed Sir Kim had questioned whether the current version of the White House 'will ever look competent'

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Raab said: 'I wouldn't pass that sort of very personalised judgement.

'I think the thing with diplomatic cables, and I used to work at the Foreign Office, I would be quite careful about what you say which is on a personal basis in those cables because it is all very well talking about the substance of the relationship, the policies, but I think some of that may in retrospect be regarded as unwise.

'But at the end of the day I am sure the two sides will get beyond any of those kind of comments.'

Mr Gauke told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show: 'I think it is very important that ambassadors give honest, unvarnished advice to their country and it is disgraceful that it has been leaked.

'We should expect our ambassadors to tell the truth as they see it.'

In the cache of documents, Sir Kim delivers a scathing verdict on the state of the White House: '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.'

He questioned whether the White House 'will ever look competent' and referring to the early allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the memo said 'the worst cannot be ruled out'.

A lengthy probe by Robert Mueller published earlier this year cleared the Trump team of the collusion allegations.



Sir Kim was appointed to his role in Washington several months before Mr Trump's shock ascendancy to the White House.

The appointment was subject to intense scrutiny after Mr Trump was elected after he swiftly called for Mr Farage to be the UK's man in Washington instead of Sir Kim.

In a highly unusual intervention, the president declared in a late-night tweet that Mr Farage would do a 'great job' and that 'many people' wanted to see him as the British ambassador.

Number 10 was forced at the time to insist there was 'no vacancy' and praised Sir Kim for being an 'excellent ambassador'.

Following Mr Trump's state visit to the UK in June, Sir Kim apparently warned that although the president had been 'dazzled' by the pomp and ceremony of the trip, his administration would remain self-interested and 'this is still the land of America First'.

In one of the most recent documents, Sir Kim refers to 'incoherent, chaotic' US policy on Iran and questions Mr Trump's publicly stated reason for calling off a retaliatory air strike against Tehran following the downing of an American drone.

The US and Iran have been at the brink of armed conflict over tensions in the Gulf, and Mr Trump stated that he called off a planned air strike with minutes to spare because of the potentially high number of casualties.

But Sir Kim said that the explanation 'doesn't stand up', and suggested it may have been motivated by Mr Trump's focus on the 2020 re-election campaign and his previous promises not to involve the US in foreign conflicts.

Donald Trump has previously called for Mr Farage to be the UK's man in Washington and said he believed the leading Eurosceptic would do a 'great job'

'It's more likely that he was never fully on board and that he was worried about how this apparent reversal of his 2016 campaign promises would look come 2020,' Sir Kim said.

He said it was 'unlikely that US policy on Iran is going to become more coherent any time soon' as 'this is a divided administration'.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'The British public would expect our ambassadors to provide ministers with an honest, unvarnished assessment of the politics in their country.

'Their views are not necessarily the views of ministers or indeed the Government.

'But we pay them to be candid. Just as the US ambassador here will send back his reading of Westminster politics and personalities.

'Of course we would expect such advice to be handled by ministers and civil servants in the right way, and it's important that our ambassadors can offer their advice and for it remain confidential.

'Our team in Washington have strong relations with the White House and no doubt... these will withstand such mischievous behaviour.'