Brexit Counsellor at British Embassy Washington resigns
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.
December 7, 2019
Barder, Brian, Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary
Barder, Brian, Brian Barder’s Diplomatic Diary, ed. Louise Barder (privately published: London, 2019), pp. 307. Paperback ISBN 978-1-944066-29-1; hardback ISBN 978-1-944066-25-3. Available from Amazon, as well as other booksellers. Sir Brian Barder, the senior British diplomat and author of the always sage and sometimes gripping What Diplomats Do, died in 2017 but, courtesy of the [...]
November 2, 2019
Johnson sits on ISC Report on Russian interference
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.
October 24, 2019
The Perm Rep and the unsigned letter
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.
EU-UK negotiations: normal rules?
4 October 2019 The British government has at virtually the last minute submitted to the EU a detailed proposal on a new withdrawal agreement
September 27, 2019
Foreign Office cleaners’ strike. Diplomacy begins at home
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’.
Parliamentary democracy 11 – 0 Boris Johnson
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
Non-papers in Brexit negotiations
23 September 2019 On 19 September three ‘non-papers’ on the Irish backstop were submitted to the EU by the non-prime minister of Britain, Boris Johnson,
Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings overseas, 1800-2000
Mark Bertram, Room for Diplomacy: The history of Britain’s diplomatic buildings overseas, 1800-2000, 2nd ed. (Spire Books: Salisbury, 2017), pp. 479 incl. index, ISBN 978-1-904965-54-1 Mark Bertram joined the Ministry of Public Buildings and Works after reading architecture at Cambridge and remained in the civil service as architect, project manager, administrator, estate manager and – [...]
If at first you don’t succeed …
4 September 2019 lie, lie and lie again. This is the maxim that, as usual, guided Boris Johnson’s behaviour in the House of Commons last night.
July 30, 2019
EU negotiations with Johnson a waste of time
30 July 2019 Even were Johnson’s new Tory government to be serious about negotiating a new Brexit deal with the EU before 31 October – which anyone who cares to look can see it almost certainly isn’t – it would be a waste of the EU’s time.
Darroch resignation. Who appoints a new ambassador?
12 July 2019 British foreign secretary and Tory leadership hopeful, Jeremy Hunt, yesterday told Foreign Office staff that ‘the UK government alone will determine appointments based on our national interest alone.’
Trump and Darroch
9 July 2019 All observers know that what the British Ambassador to the United States, Sir Kim Darroch, said about Donald Trump and his White House in secret, classified messages to the Foreign Office is true.
April 11, 2019
Diplomatic Notebooks 1, 1958-1960: The view from Ankara
Zeki Kuneralp, Diplomatic Notebooks 1, 1958-1960: The view from Ankara, ed. and introduced by Sinan Kuneralp (The Isis Press: Istanbul, 2018), ISBN 978-975-428-616-8/978-975-428-617-5, pp. 342, incl. name and analytical index. Publisher's page Zeki Kuneralp (1914-1998) was one of Turkey’s most gifted, well-liked and influential diplomats of the second half of the twentieth century. This book, dispassionately [...]
March 1, 2019
Petition on Russia and BREXIT
1 March 2019 It has long been suspected that Vladimir Putin’s government, in part via the agency of the Russian Embassy in London, gave covert support to the campaign that secured the narrow victory for the Brexiters in the June 2016 referendum in the UK.
February 14, 2019
British Diplomats on Brexit
14 February 2019 It’s always been blindingly obvious but it needed saying again, and has just been succinctly stated once more by more than 40 former, senior British ambassadors and high commissioners in a letter to Theresa May,
December 10, 2018
Q. Which London embassy needs 13 cultural attachés?
10 December 2018 Answer: The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia. Why?
The Emirates, SIS – and Brexit
2 December 2018 Like many others, I heaved a sigh of relief when I learned that Matthew Hedges had been pardoned and allowed to return home.
November 24, 2018
The inevitability of a bad Brexit deal for Britain
24 November 2018 Predictably enough, the hard right-wing nationalists in Parliament are pounding their chests and claiming that Theresa May’s government could have got a much better deal on Brexit.
October 18, 2018
The Khashoggi affair and consular law
18 October 2018 Some points of law concerning this sickening and profoundly worrying case need clearing up.