What is in the inbox of the new UK ambassador to the US?

From Huawei to a US trade deal, Karen Pierce has her work cut out, writes John Rentoul

Pierce will have a lengthy not-to-do list (AP)

The first female UK ambassador to Washington, Dame Karen Pierce, has a daunting list of problems to resolve when she takes up her post in the 1970s brick warehouse that is the British embassy on Massachusetts Ave.

First, she has to avoid annoying a short-tempered president, who described her predecessor, Sir Kim Darroch, as a “very stupid guy”. Admittedly, his emails, calling Trump’s administration “clumsy and inept”, had just been leaked.

So top of Pierce’s not-to-do list is: do not write anything down. Do not be tempted to compose those entertainingly perceptive and beautifully written honest appraisals of your host country that so impress politicians and fellow fast-streamers back home.

It is, though, the other part of the traditional diplomat’s job in which she needs to excel: diplomacy. President Trump was reported to be “apoplectic” on the phone to Boris Johnson about the prime minister’s decision to allow Huawei, the Chinese tech company, to build part of the UK’s 5G network.

This may have been a story planted by Johnson’s people in order to show how independent he is of the US, but there is undoubtedly a difference of view between the US and UK governments on the security risk posed by China. A difference of view that Pierce is paid to smooth over.

The other big disjoint in the alliance is Iran. The British take the conventional view that dialogue and economic incentives are the most plausible ways of restraining the ayatollahs’ nuclear ambitions. President Trump takes the view that assassinating Revolutionary Guard commanders in defiance of international law is the kind of language they understand. Nothing much Pierce can do about that except to follow Johnson’s example and say as little as possible in public while being as diplomatic as possible in private.

The big test for the new ambassador, though, is probably the US-UK trade talks. Pierce would not take part in the actual negotiations – that is a matter for specialist trade negotiators, not that the UK has many of them after 47 years of having EU negotiators do it for us – but she would be expected to prepare the ground.

Above all, there is a political job to be done in understanding the procedures and interests in congress that will decide whether any trade deal succeeds or fails.

Pierce is already in the US as our permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, so she knows about American politics. And when she was asked in September if she wanted the job, she said: “Of course I’d absolutely love to do it. It’s a wonderful, challenging job.”

It may be that “challenging” is one of those words that has a special meaning in Mandarin, the dialect of the senior civil service. It probably means: “Absolutely impossible.”