UK Foreign Office has seriously gone astray, critics say

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Once the engine room of a global empire, the British Foreign Office, Commonwealth and Development has been deprived in recent years of influence, prestige and self-confidence.

Britain’s chaotic evacuation effort from Afghanistan in August highlighted the department’s shortcomings, according to a whistleblower, but critics say FCDO’s handling of the crisis highlights broad issues in a department once considered the Rolls-Royce of Whitehall.

“In national terms, the FCDO is at the lowest level of operational competence and respect than at any point in my 45 years of studying UK foreign policy,” said Professor Michael Clarke, former director of the Royal United Services Institute, a thinker -Char.

Liz Truss, who succeeded Dominic Raab as foreign minister in September, is on a mission to turn the situation around. Her political star is on the rise – she is the most popular minister with conservative activists, who will pick the next party leader – but it will be a big test.

It is also vital that Truss can regain control, given that this month Boris Johnson gave new functions to the Foreign Secretary and the FCDO: she will be responsible for relations with the EU following the resignation. by Brexit Minister Lord David Frost.

Truss is now tasked with mending tattered relations with the bloc and resolving the dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade deals, which were first set out in the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal .

Liz Truss is tasked with restoring relations with the EU and resolving the dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trade deals © Anna Gordon / FT

Clarke said the stakes were high. “The FCDO is now on the edge of a very slippery slope, and it will plunge it very quickly in the eyes of the world unless it gives it back its former prestige through increased competence and a better strategic vision”, a- he added.

Critics say the FCDO must increase its spending and staff if British diplomacy is to maintain its influence, but years of government austerity have taken their toll.

In Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review in October, the FCDO was the only department in Whitehall to cut its budget by 5% by 2024-25.

This month, Truss hailed British diplomats as the “best” in the world, but a few days later officials learned in an internal CTF email: “We plan on the basis of a reduction in just under 10% of the overall size of our workforce by March 2025. James Cleverly, a minister at the FCDO, later denied that such cuts would take place.

British diplomats say their embassies are strapped for cash and much smaller than they should be. Some expensive diplomats based abroad have been replaced with cheaper local staff.

Meanwhile, the 2020 merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development is causing widespread concern – a favorite project of Johnson, who served as foreign secretary between 2016 and 2018.

The reshuffle was followed by a cut in Britain’s overseas aid budget, and one diplomat said the merger had “gone internally like a bucket of cold patients.”

This month, a 25-year-old whistleblower cited the merger as one of the factors that contributed to Britain’s “chaotic” evacuation from Afghanistan, led by the FCDO.

Raphael Marshall, FCDO office manager in London until September, said staff who previously worked in the Department for International Development could not access computers in a London crisis center because “DfID’s computer systems and of the FCO are not yet integrated ”.

He also claimed in written evidence to MPs that during Britain’s evacuation effort, pleas for help from thousands of desperate Afghans seeking to flee the Taliban were ignored, and that Raab, then Minister of Foreign Affairs, “did not fully understand the situation”.

Britain’s chaotic evacuation effort from Afghanistan in August highlighted the department’s inadequacies, a whistleblower says © Ben Shread / UK MOD Crown copyright

“There has been a real problem with political leadership, which has not helped the confidence of the Foreign Office, nor its impact in Whitehall,” said Peter Ricketts, a former senior official at the Foreign Office.

Insiders describe the King Charles Street department as “demoralized” after years of underperforming foreign secretaries.

“Managing Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab has been quite a depressing experience for those who work in the department,” said one.

Alexandra Hall Hall, former British Ambassador to Georgia and former Brexit Advisor at the UK Embassy in Washington, said the post of Foreign Secretary no longer necessarily fell to a Minister with long thinking experience on the UK’s global strategic challenges.

“This is a top prize – one of the top ministerial posts awarded to politicians for their loyalty, or to silence them, or outside the country,” she added.

In addition to high ministerial turnover, critics say the FCDO’s position has also been affected by a strategic drift, just at a time when the UK needs to flesh out its post-Brexit ‘Great Britain’ foreign policy. -World Britain ”.

Brexit would have hit the morale of the department hard: it played no role in the negotiations between the UK and the EU that followed the 2016 referendum on leaving the bloc. “The Foreign Office has obviously had five very difficult years,” Ricketts said.

In 2017, Sir Ivan Rogers announced his resignation as Britain’s Ambassador to the EU, claiming that then Prime Minister Theresa May’s team had ignored his warnings about the complexity of the Brexit.

Sir Ivan Rogers, pictured in 2017, claimed that former Prime Minister Theresa May’s team ignored their warnings about the complexity of Brexit © Jack Taylor / Getty Images,

“Since then, there has been a lot of self-censorship,” said a former ambassador, who left FCDO two years ago. “You just thought you couldn’t give honest advice, there was a risk that you would be accused of being a ‘Remainer’ who couldn’t be trusted.”

Diplomats say they still feel bruised by Johnson’s failure to defend Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s former ambassador to the United States, who was forced to step down in 2019 following the leak a cache of confidential diplomatic cables criticizing Donald Trump’s administration.

A spokesperson for FCDO said: “The Minister of Foreign Affairs has set a clear strategic direction for FCDO and is empowering staff around the world to implement it. . .

“The department prioritizes forging closer economic and security ties with friends and allies as a means of exerting more global influence, attracting more countries into the orbit of freedom-loving democracies and to create a network of freedom across the world. ”

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