{"id":638615,"date":"2025-12-17T18:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/638615\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T18:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T18:06:11","slug":"varun-chandra-out-of-the-running-to-be-next-uk-envoy-to-the-us-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/638615\/","title":{"rendered":"Varun Chandra out of the running to be next UK envoy to the US \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office official\u00a0familiar\u00a0with the final shortlist process, and granted anonymity to speak freely, described a \u201cmassive fightback in the past days\u201d to sway Prime Minister Keir Starmer towards a diplomat candidate and rule out Chandra.<\/p>\n<p>They put the shift in direction in No. 10 down to a mix of \u201cassiduous lobbying\u201d about both the risks of another political appointee and the importance of a pick with security and\u00a0tough negotiating experience \u2013 as well as the advantages of lifting Foreign Office morale in the midst of job cuts.<\/p>\n<p>The key diplomatic post has been vacant since Mandelson, a long-serving Labour politician, resigned from the role amid fresh scrutiny of his friendship with late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n<p>Burning issues in the in-tray of the winner will including resolving a fresh dispute with the Trump administration over a flagship Tech Prosperity Deal the two sides landed on earlier this year \u2014 and which has been put on ice by Washington.<\/p>\n<p>No. 10 has tried to downplay the spat, saying it is all part of \u201ccomplex\u201d and \u201cactive\u201d discussions with the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office official\u00a0familiar\u00a0with the final shortlist process, and granted anonymity to speak freely, described&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,807,11582,809,1144,28300,712,811,479,1201,16,15,49,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-638615","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-keir-starmer","14":"tag-lobbying","15":"tag-negotiations","16":"tag-northern-ireland","17":"tag-peter-mandelson","18":"tag-scotland","19":"tag-security","20":"tag-tariffs","21":"tag-trade","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-united-states","25":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}