{"id":321327,"date":"2025-12-17T17:46:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T17:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/321327\/"},"modified":"2025-12-17T17:46:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T17:46:08","slug":"varun-chandra-out-of-the-running-to-be-next-uk-envoy-to-the-us-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/321327\/","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":321328,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,420,6235,2363,50,424,1351,156,426,56,54,158,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-321327","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-keir-starmer","12":"tag-lobbying","13":"tag-negotiations","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-peter-mandelson","16":"tag-security","17":"tag-tariffs","18":"tag-trade","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-united-kingdom","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321328"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}