Shooting the messenger and more - behind the sorry Kim Darroch saga

IN yet another example of how the presidency of Donald Trump has become fodder for late-night television comedy acts, the White House occupant engaged recently in another very robust Twitter brawl .

As if damaging the US relationship with Canada, Germany and Mexico is not enough, this time the target of Mr Trump's angry tweets was the representative of a country that tops the list of Washington's international allies - Britain's ambassador to the United States, Kim Darroch.

Ambassador Darroch, a highly-respected member of the British Foreign Service, has sent cables to his superiors in London providing them with his assessments of the Trump administration's policy agenda as well as the US president's temperament and political standing. In other words, like any other member of Washington's diplomatic corps, Sir Kim was doing his job, providing his government with information and analysis that it needed in order to effectively conduct the "special relationship" with the United Kingdom's most important partner on the world stage, certainly a crucial task at a time when Britain is mired in the challenges posed by the decision to withdraw from the European Union (EU).