25 January 2025. I was not surprised to learn that, despite continuing stiff opposition from London’s Tower Hamlet’s borough council, the new Labour government in the UK recently made clear that – subject to minor changes – it would support the long delayed building of China’s massive new embassy near Tower Bridge, thereby no doubt allowing the stalled plan for the badly needed re-building of the UK’s own embassy in Beijing to proceed.
13 Oct. 2024 The IDF’s current attacks on UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon should come as no surprise. It is evidence of Israel’s long standing hostility to the UN itself.
2 October, 2024. Security Council reform was one of the subjects dealt with in the UN’s ‘Pact for the Future’ that was comfortably adopted by consensus in the General Assembly on 22 September 2024. The Pact had been promoted by the Organization’s leadership, nurtured by diplomacy ‘facilitated’ by Germany and Namibia, and had easily overcome last-minute Russian opposition. Even one of the usual suspects happy to stand to attention when Moscow snaps its fingers – or at least adopt a posture of friendly neutrality – misbehaved.
30 August 2024. Elon Musk, the Trump-supporting mega-rich ‘free speech absolutist’ (except when it’s his authoritarian friends who are asking), has been neatly taken down by the estimable Robert Reich. In this piece in The Guardian, he also lists 6 ways in which the ‘unaccountable political power’ produced by Musk’s enormous wealth can be [...]
10 July, 2024 At this particularly dangerous juncture in international relations, it is worth re-emphasising the condemnation of aggression by the Charter of the United Nations, in force since 24 October 1945 and to which virtually all states have signed up (the Holy See and Palestine are represented by permanent observer missions).This is why I have just made another link to it via the UN logo now placed at the top of the right-hand sidebar of this website.
28 February 2024. There is no collective noun for diplomats in common usage, although some candidates for the title have surfaced over the years. Here I note these, consider some other possibilities and come to no serious conclusion.
11 February, 2024. In 2015 the Russian Embassy in the Republic of Ireland secured local government approval to quadruple its footprint. However, on 4 March 2020, without publicity, the central government in Dublin overrode this decision and gutted its plans. What were they and why was this action taken?
2 February 2024. In the years after the incident in 2019 in which the wife of an intel officer on a US Embassy annex in central England killed a British motorcyclist by careless driving, I posted three blogs on its diplomatic consequences. This one distils their essence and adds more considered reflections.
27 January, 2024 China’s plans to build a much larger embassy in London on the site of the old Royal Mint Court near Tower Bridge appear to have been abandoned. Why did this happen and what lessons can be learned from the experience?
16 December, 2023. Why ‘COP28’ is a bad brand name and what might replace it.
Straw, Jack: The English Job: Understanding Iran and why it distrusts Britain (Biteback, 2019), pp. 390, incl. index, ISBN 978-1-78590-399-1 It was only by chance that I stumbled on this book, partly because from a marketing point of view the title is perfectly useless, and it’s hard to understand why the publisher agreed to [...]
23 November 2023. The reasons for supposing that Turkey might emerge in pole position to mediate an end to the Israel-Hamas war should the opportunity ever arise.
17 November, 2023. A humanitarian pause is the answer. Here's why.
10 August 2023 Considerable attention has been focused on China’s participation in the Saudi-hosted talks at national security adviser level on Ukraine in Jedda over the weekend 5-6 August 2023, while Russia was not invited.
23 July 2023 The crisply styled Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has rediscovered and, in the modern way of things, rebranded the agricultural attaché. First installed in diplomatic missions after the First World War, not least those of the United States, this officer has re-appeared in some British missions abroad [...]
20 July 2023 My old Virgin Media email account has crashed yet again, so - like many others - I have given up on it. Anyone wishing to reach me who has not received a change of address message can do so via the CONTACT form, at the right-hand end of the top horizontal [...]
12 July 2023 About a week ago my friend and close neighbour, John Sandford-Smith, turned up at my door. In one hand he held a large tool I had lent him some time ago (he had forgotten I had told him I no longer needed it) and in the other [...]
February 15 2023 It is a defining feature of the permanent embassy that – in contrast to the special mission – it has general responsibilities, and these might cover almost any subject. Although I’m guessing, a recent and extremely important case in point appears to be the role of the [...]
28 November 2022 It has long been suspected that governments riddled with corruption have allowed this reflex to extend – for a fee – to appointing rogues of all sorts to represent them as ‘honorary consuls’ in foreign states that permit them, as the vast majority do.
3 March 2022 Check how your country voted in the UN debates on Ukraine in the last few days, or found that, regrettably, its permanant representative had pressing engagements elsewhere and failed to vote altogether.
