Chaos over Trump’s red box ‘like something out of The Thick Of It’ – Mandelson

Mr Mandelson was also uncomplimentary about Cork man Morgan McSweeney and Downing Street staff

A red box was one of the gifts that ‘would mean the most to the president’, an official email said (Peter Byne/PA)

Disgraced former US ambassador Peter Mandelson described the shambolic process for securing a ministerial-style red despatch box coveted by Donald Trump as like something from the political satire The Thick of It.

He said the “saga goes on” in an email to the British prime minister’s then chief of staff, Cork man Morgan McSweeney, following protracted exchanges between high-ranking officials over the bespoke gift for last year’s UK state visit by the US president.