“We Want the EU to Thrive and to Be a Success”

Q&A with Sir Nigel Kim Darroch, Ambassador of the United Kingdom

Name: Sir Nigel Kim Darroch | Age: 64| Hometown: Durham, England
Ambassador to the U.S. since: January 2016

Tell me a little bit about your family and personal background. Where did you grow up? What was your childhood and family like?

I was born in North East England, a few miles from Durham, where my mother’s parents lived. My parents were living in Kenya — my father was teaching at the main private school in Nairobi — but they thought the medical facilities were better in the UK so they came back to have me. I lived in Kenya until I was about 6 or 7 and then my parents got divorced, so I came back to the UK with my younger brother. We went to a tiny village school in Berkshire, which is about 70 miles west of London near Oxford, until I managed to get a scholarship to a school in Abingdon. When I finished there I went to university at Durham and then joined the Foreign Office.

Did growing up in Kenya have any influence on choosing zoology as a major?

This will sound amazingly casual and unconsidered, but the school advisors told us that you needed higher grades to get into university with arts subjects than the sciences. And if you’re naturally lazy like me, you just go for the easier option. So it was nothing to do with wanting to do sciences [laughter].

So what led you to join the Foreign Office? Was there an experience that made it clear you wanted to work internationally?

The honest answer is that they were the first people to offer me a job. I was brought up abroad and quite like travel, and no more profound reason than that. I also bid for jobs in management trainee jobs at several big multinational companies. I had already made it through to the last interview with the Foreign Office and the first interview with the British company was two weeks later, but by that time the Foreign Office had already offered me a job so I didn’t bother to go to any of the other interviews with the commercial companies.

Your first diplomatic posting was to Tokyo and your career has taken you all over the world — is there a particularly memorable posting you have had?

They’ve all been great, but there is no doubt that Tokyo in the early 1980s was most exceptional and exotic, because Japanese culture is just so unique. Tokyo is an extraordinary city. We used to go to the coastline every weekend and to the mountains for skiing in winter. It’s fabulous for weekends away. It’s an amazing country. From the pure fascination of it, my favorite posting would have to be Japan. Also, because it was my first posting…and we had no children. We traveled all over SE Asia, we went to Beijing in 1982 and I tell you, it looks very different now.

What characteristic would you say has been most critical to your success?

This will sound falsely modest, but it’s never imagining that I’m the cleverest person in the room. I’m very happy to steal everyone else’s best ideas.

One other thing — the most important thing for a diplomat — is a willingness to listen, to understand what the other person is saying.

As you reach later stages your career, you’re doing a lot of influencing and saying, “Well, this is what my government thinks.” But the way you make your name in the early stages of your career is if you can persuade people to open up and tell you what they really think. It makes your reporting really stand out from everyone else’s reporting. So you have to learn to listen and to encourage people to tell you more than maybe they’re inclined to tell you.

Looking back, what advice would you give to your younger self?

From where I’ve come from and how I started, which was in one of the lower grades in the Foreign Office, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky and it has gone better than I probably deserved or that I could have ever expected. I can’t look back and say there were big mistakes, but there were one or two setbacks when I didn’t get jobs which turned out in the end to be a good thing. About 15 years ago, I was the last of two to be the Foreign Office political director, and I didn’t get the job. I was kind of angry at the time because I thought I was the better candidate. Three weeks later, the European advisor to the prime minister resigned suddenly and I was the only person on the block who could be Europe adviser to the PM. The guy who beat me for political director, we had lunch a few months later, and he said, “So I beat you for the political director job and the result is you move to Number 10 and get promoted above me. Just explain how that works.”

So I think if there’s a piece of advice — setbacks often turn into opportunities.

What is your favorite (or least favorite) part of being an ambassador?

There’s nothing I really dislike about being an ambassador. You spend your whole time doing interesting things. As you go through the Foreign Office, at the beginning you have a few interesting things and a lot of routine, boring things that you have to really plough through. But by the time you get to the later and higher stages of your career, you’re involved in very exciting things, particularly in Washington. My most favorite part is the privilege of meeting new interesting people in all fields, whether it’s politics or diplomacy or as much in arts or sport and culture — everyday.

Things I could do without — sitting in NY traffic jams and all the hours on airplanes. I’m 6’ 4’’ and the Foreign Office does not pay for business class, so you’re always traveling in economy and that gets kind of painful on 10-hour flights, especially if you’ve got chronic back problems like me.

If you were not an ambassador, what would you be?

A motor racing driver (just kidding). I think I would have quite liked to be a barrister, the guy in the courtroom. I would like to be a film director but I have no time for it. I’m also quite fascinated by stuff in the financial world. When I was in Brussels and ambassador to the EU during the financial crisis of 2008, we had to negotiate directives on hedge funds and capital adequacy for banks and all that kind of stuff. It sounds really geeky, but it is all very interesting and I learned all sorts of stuff about hedge funds I’d never known. So I would either like to be a hedge fund manager or a barrister…if I couldn’t be a champion sportsman.

Which sport?

Either sailing or squash. Those are my two best sports.

After serving as the Prime Minister’s Principal Advisor on European Affairs, you were appointed as Britain’s Permanent Representative to the EU. Was there an important lesson that you learned during your years in Brussels?

When you’re spending three days a week, all day, for almost five years, sitting around a table negotiating, you learn quite a lot about the art of negotiation. A critical thing — if you’re going to propose a compromise, it’s not enough just to have the idea. The timing of when you propose it is critical. If you propose it too early and people haven’t played out the negotiation and finished arguing for their points, it would just be lost. And if you wait too long, someone else will come in with their idea. But there is always a critical moment in a negotiation where everyone just wants to finish. And you develop a sixth sense the longer you do it for when that moment is, and that’s when you deploy your idea, and sometimes it works.

What would you say is something that most people don’t understand about the EU, but they should?

The UK was outside the European Union for the first 15–20 years. When we joined it, it was called the Common Market. And of course, the founders of the European Union were thinking about creating it amidst the wreckage of Europe that had been torn apart by two wars in 40 years and by the extraordinary level of destruction that the Second World War caused. They saw it primarily as a political project, a project about ensuring that Europe never again got torn apart by war.

Just six months into your posting here as ambassador, the UK voted to leave the EU. What is your greatest hope for the UK post-Brexit?

I hope that the PM’s deal gets passed because I’m sure it is the best deal that can be done. And on the back of that, I look forward to a future where we have a good, near frictionless trading relationship with Europe and where there is lots of cooperation in other areas. Where we’ve also forged free trade agreements with all of our major trading partners, starting with America, but also including China, India, and the major economies around the world. And it’s attainable, but the first stage is to get the Prime Minister’s package — the package she’s agreed with the other 27 — endorsed and upheld. I’m convinced it’s the best deal that can be done.

What do you hope to see the EU accomplish in the next 5–10 years?

One of the frustrations of the EU is that the single market in goods has mostly been done, but the single market in services still has quite a long way to go. A promising market in services would be very good for us because services are a very strong part of our economy.

We look to a future where there lots of cooperation between us and the EU. The PM has always said that although we are leaving we want the EU to thrive and to be a success. And a strong and vibrant European economy on our doorstep is good for us too.

In a recent interview you said you “grew up in a council flat.” And now you’re a knight. How has your upbringing shaped how you approach diplomacy?

When I got the scholarship to attend school in Abingdon, we had to move quite quickly and that’s when we moved into the council flat where we lived for maybe five years. I think I was the only person in the school uniform walking out of this council estate every morning to go to school.

I think what it teaches you is that all things are possible no matter where you come from, if you put the work in.

However lazy I am naturally, I have worked tremendously hard in my Foreign Office career. The first big break I got was to be chief of staff to one of our ministers and from then on I think I’ve worked consistently 60–70 hour weeks for the rest of my career. It’s fascinating work so you don’t complain about it, you enjoy it. But you put the hours in.

And now you clearly do not live in a council flat. What do you like most about living in the residence?

It’s a wonderful historic building, it’s the finest diplomatic residence that we have. My colleague in Paris might disagree, but I think it’s the finest residence on the planet. We’re surrounded by beautiful paintings. My favorite thing? I’m tempted to say the tennis court because I use it every weekend, but the garden is beautiful all year round. It was designed by Gertrude Jekyll, a famous English garden designer and modeled on English country house gardens. From spring onwards through the summer and autumn there’s an ever changing picture of beauty out there. With everything that’s going on in Washington, it’s an area of peace right in the middle of the city. The other thing — this is a house designed for parties.

The chefs, the people who look after the rooms upstairs, the butlers, it’s just an extraordinary well-oiled, smooth, brilliantly functioning machine. We do about 800 events a year and they are flawless.

Favorite city you’ve visited in the U.S.?

I’ve done close to 34 American States. I like Miami, San Francisco, LA, I think that Boston is wonderful, the energy in New york is amazing, and St. Louis is kind of cool. But if I have to pick one place to live for a couple of years, I would say Santa Fe, New Mexico.

So…marmite?

I hate it.

Any British foods you can’t live without?

I’ve traveled a lot, so I like all sorts of types of food. And Americans do British food pretty well — you’ve got great fish and chips. But there is one thing you would never find in an American restaurant, it’s Branston Pickle, a British-style relish. You can get it in the exotic foods aisle in Safeway. Also, I quite like crumpets.

Favorite American food you’ve tried?

Tex Mex is just great. I love fried chicken. I’m not a big fan of the pancakes you have for breakfast, but you do bacon much better than the Brits do. British bacon tends to be a bit floppy, whereas here the bacon is always crispy.

What do you like to in your free time?

If we have a spare evening, we will almost always use it to go to the cinema. We go to a lot of films.

What’s your favorite film?

My favorite film of all time is Five Easy Pieces. It was a cult film in the 70s and it made Jack Nicholson’s name. It’s about a guy who was a concert pianist and gave it all up and went and worked on oil rigs because he couldn’t take the pressure.

What are you most proud of?

I’m quite proud to have got to this stage in my career from quite a modest background. When I started in the Foreign Office they couldn’t figure out what to do with me so they sent me off to be the most junior spokesman back at the end of the 70s. I watched the then head of the Press Office, the press spokesman for the Foreign Office and thought, “That’s the job I would really like.” And I eventually got it in 1998. Most jobs you just kind of drift into, so it’s nice when you set your sights on something and it actually happens. It’s been a pretty good ride.

This story is part of the @EUintheUS “Ambassador Spotlight Series,” featuring in-depth, personal interviews with ambassadors from the European Union’s 28 Member States. Follow our publication and stay tuned for the next story.