Trump anger at Ed Miliband’s appointment as foreign secretary
The White House is “deeply concerned” about Ed Miliband’s appointment as foreign secretary, with a warning that Donald Trump has not forgotten scathing remarks the former Labour leader has made about him in the past.
New prime minister Andy Burnham has been cautioned that Mr Miliband has some “serious diplomatic repair to undertake” in the US, after his promotion to the role on Monday sparked anger from the Trump administration.
The former energy secretary has previously clashed with Mr Trumpover net zero and his attitudes to democracy and in 2016 he described the president as “a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper”.
One source close to the president told The Independent: “There’s genuine anger about this appointment.”
The two men have been attacking one another for more than a decade. Mr Miliband previously said of the president: “We must do our best at home and abroad to resist the worst of Trumpism… These are dark days for America and the world. There can be little solace right now.”
In 2017, he said Mr Trump had “lowered the bar for idiocy” and later joined a Stop Trump March in London. He also criticised the president’s “incredibly peculiar relationship with Russia” and accused him of lowering standards in politics.
The new foreign secretary has also described Mr Trump’s criticism on social media of the UK’s stance on drilling for oil and gas as “irrelevant”, with the president highly critical of his “net zero zealotry” and accusing him of blocking the UK from expanding oil and gas operations in the North Sea.
On Mr Miliband’s past remarks, one ally close to the president told The Independent: “Trump doesn’t forget. He will not forget. Miliband has some serious diplomatic repair to undertake.”
A consultant who works with both the White House and State Department added: “It [Mr Miliband’s appointment] is going down like a lead balloon. The US government no longer takes the UK seriously.
“Ed Miliband is known in Washington for all the wrong reasons. Ed Miliband is seen as an unreasonable ‘nut zero’ extremist who blocked North Sea oil production but was happy for the UK to purchase Norway’s fossil fuels from the North Sea.”
The White House is said to be “deeply concerned” about the appointment even though Mr Miliband has previously described how much he loves the US.
They also noted that Mr Burnham himself said in 2021: “Any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed.”
Mr Burnham chose Mr Miliband as foreign secretary partly because he decided against making him chancellor, following a backlash from those on the right of the party.
However, the plan, as revealed over the weekend by The Independent, is for Mr Miliband to reform the Foreign Office around the UK’s climate goals and find a roadmap back to spending 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on overseas aid, which was slashed under Sir Keir Starmer.
