1 January, 2021 Thus the headline on The Guardian’s eloquent editorial today, New Year’s Day 2021, the day on which the UK starts life outside the European Union. I have nothing to add to it – except be sure to click on the link ‘led by journalists’ (hell, there it is, I've provided it myself) [...]
11 December, 2020 Brexit head-banger in chief, first liar of the United Kingdom, and second-rate comedian, Boris Johnson, is primed to lead the UK, with sickening relish and grinning the while, into the abyss.
5 November 2020 The American scholar-diplomat, Laurence E. Pope, died on 31 October 2020.
12 September 2020 The moral and political decay of Boris Johnson’s government has now marked a new low. It has been forced to admit publicly that it is willing to break an important international agreement signed and ratified less than a year earlier. The price of this is already significant and, unless it is stopped, [...]
2 September 2020 First it was the Foreign Office (FO), then it evolved into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), and today it becomes – as foreshadowed by Boris Johnson on 16 June – Britain’s ‘super-department for international affairs’, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). Was this a good idea?
29 July 2020 Over the last three and a half years the Trump White House has steadily inflicted serious damage on the US Department of State.
21 July 2020 After nine months since it was cleared for publication by the British Intelligence Community (IC) but then withheld by Boris Johnson’s government, the Russia Report has finally been released.
7 July 2020 On 2 July 2020 I received an email from Razvan Constantinescu, the energetic Romanian Honorary-Consul General for the south-west of England based in Bristol and president of the Bristol Consular Corps. This told me how the Covid 19 pandemic first revolutionised the nature of his work load, and then reduced it to [...]
14 June 2020 I am a keen gardener, and during the lockdown I had the great good fortune to be allowed by our neighbour to take over the care of her very large, tree-lined, and blissfully quiet garden. The weather was also unusually good, so I spent on average 6 hours a day working in [...]
12 June 2020 The future relationship negotiations between Britain and the EU, which commenced on 3 March 2020, teach many lessons in the art of negotiation. Among these are the obvious value of certain kinds of deadline and the less obvious value of publicly announcing ‘red lines’ before talks start. For present purposes I shall [...]
15 May, 2020 An influential article of 2014 noted that health attachés were appointed shortly after the Second World War and were thereafter assigned by ‘a growing number of countries … to work in embassies in countries of strategic importance.’ Is this true? If not, why not? And does it matter anyway?
14 March 2020 As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has been announced that the second round of face-to-face talks on the UK’s new relationship with the EU, due to take place in London next week with the arrival of an EU delegation of over 100 trade experts, has been cancelled. Video-conferencing has been [...]
17 January 2020 Recent publicity about the hostile reaction in South Korea to Harry Harris, appointed as US ambassador at Seoul by Donald Trump in June 2018, serves to underline an important point:
8 January 2020 Probably not; or, if it does, only with further passages blacked out.
7 December 2019 It was just a matter of time before a senior British diplomat got so sick of representing the UK government of Boris Johnson that she resigned.
2 November 2019 A report on Russian meddling in British democracy by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee is being suppressed by the Johnson government.
24 October 2019 A recent development in Brexit has provided interesting evidence of the role of ambassadors in clarifying their governments’ intentions, however contradictory they might be.
4 October 2019 The British government has at virtually the last minute submitted to the EU a detailed proposal on a new withdrawal agreement
27 September 2019 For those of us who study embassies, consulates and foreign ministries it is easy to forget that they could not work well, if at all, without ‘support staff’.
24 September 2019 Today 11 justices of the UK Supreme Court unanimously declared the non-prime minister of the UK, Boris Johnson, to have unlawfully advised the Queen to suspend Parliament
