Former British ambassador to the US Lord Kim Darroch has put his foot in it again, saying Joe Biden is past his best - which was "never that great" to begin with.
Darroch, who was forced to resign in July 2019 after his disparaging comments about US President Donald Trump were leaked, let slip the attitude of Washington embassy staff to the former vice president, now running for the presidency against President Donald Trump.
"What we used to say inside the embassy about Joe Biden - to be indiscreet - is that 'he is certainly past his best, and his best was never that great'."
Guardian diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour tweeted the quote from the New Statesman podcast.
Seemingly assuming Biden would win Tuesday's election, Wintour said Darroch's put-down would not play well with Democrat politicians who already openly hold the UK in contempt for leaving the European Union, despite threats by ex-president Barack Obama that Britain would go to the "back of the queue" for trade deal with the US.
Earlier in the podcast, Darroch compared Trump to Arnold Schwarzenegger's cyborg assassin in The Terminator, commenting that the president seemed politically indestructible as he waded through the flames of one controversy after another.
"For a man who has risen to the highest office on the planet, President Trump radiates insecurity," Darroch wrote in internal Foreign Office cables in the summer of 2017. "We could also be at the beginning of a downward spiral, rather than just a rollercoaster; something could emerge that leads to disgrace and downfall.”
“As seen from here, we really don’t believe that this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional, less unpredictable, less faction-riven, less diplomatically clumsy and inept,” Darroch also wrote.