The Foreign Office is “elitist and rooted in the past”. Not my words, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator, but those of some of the UK’s top ex-diplomats, as set out in a report published this week.
The former mandarins, including one-time cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill, don’t hold back. The department, they say, is “struggling to deliver a clear mandate”, and too often operates “like a giant private office for the foreign secretary of the day”. It should be replaced by a new Department for International Affairs, which would handle all of the country’s overseas dealings, including trade, aid, cultural relations and the climate crisis.
Its grand premises on Whitehall should also be updated, said Angus Colwell in the same paper, perhaps removing some of the colonial-era art, to “help create a more open working culture and send a clear picture about Britain’s future”.
Mandarins embarrassed by British ‘greatness’
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Time for some ‘realism’
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