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UK ambassador lauds Obama, slams Trump

by Jordan Fabian - 12/26/15 10:19 AM ET

The United Kingdom’s top diplomat in the United States is a fan of President Obama.

“I think the legacy, the balance sheet, doesn’t look bad,” Sir Peter Westmacott, the outgoing British ambassador in Washington, said in an interview with The Guardian newspaper.

{mosads}”It certainly doesn’t feel to me like this is a lame-duck presidency which has given up,” he added. “He’s motoring along and he’s doing through executive action what he needs to.”

Westmacott’s comments come as he set to retire from Britain’s foreign service after stints in Iran, Turkey and France.

Many Republican presidential candidates have lambasted Obama’s foreign policy, saying he has been reluctant to work with traditional U.S. allies such as the U.K. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), a 2016 contender, has criticized Obama for removing a bust of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office.

Not so, according to Westmacott.

“President Obama seems to me to be somebody who’s pretty fond of the U.K. and never misses an opportunity to tell us how enthusiastic he is and the affection he feels towards the royal family,” he said.

He pushed back against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, who has argued the U.S. has entered decline with Obama at the helm.

“I don’t think this is a country which is in decline at all,” said the ambassador.

But he said it’s not surprising Trump resonates with large swaths of the American electorate.

“I think he’s pushing a few important buttons,” Westmacott said. “It is not accidental that on the front of his baseball cap it says, ‘Make America Great Again.’ For whatever reason, there are people who feel America is not at the moment the world’s dominant power who snaps its fingers and the rest of the world falls into place, that America has become a more reluctant leader, shall we say, and Trump is out there saying the opposite, and people say, ‘That’s great, that’s what America should be.’ “

On the other hand, Westmacott said Obama has made major progress on healthcare reform, climate change and the economy, even though he acknowledged sluggish progress on addressing income inequality.

He lauded the deals Obama struck with Iran and Cuba, saying they took “political courage.”

Both Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, “did a remarkable job of making America loved again after the difficult years of the previous regime,” Westmacott said.

Tags Barack Obama Donald Trump England