Foreign Office HQ is where British interests go to die

It is hard to pick out a low point from my dealings with the Foreign Office when I was defence secretary. Hard not because there weren’t any low points, but because there were so many. 

Like the time of the Sudan emergency, when it turned out that the ambassador, the deputy ambassador, and the head of security were all out of the country on holiday at the time of the coup, leaving us basically blind. 

Or when, during the evacuation of Kabul, it turned out that the only thing the Foreign Office’s rapid deployment team had done was “rapidly redeploy” themselves back to the UK just as the military and Ministry of Defence civil servants flew into danger. Or the constant efforts to block lethal aid to Ukraine for fear of “upsetting and provoking” Putin. 

The list sadly is too long for one article, but standing in silence in the UN for the death of the president of Iran has to be one of the lowest points.

The Foreign Office seems to be governed by two principles. The first is “not to upset anyone”, even if it comes at the cost of Britain’s national interest. The second is that it has an overwhelming “duty of care”, not to UK citizens but to its own workforce. 

No sacrifice, no putting Britain first, no risk, and definitely no recognition that in today’s world you need to be good at “playing chess” with your opponents. Instead, we have a Foreign Office that hides behind protocol and pomposity.

The blame for this lies not with our ambassadors but with a HQ in King Charles Street that has removed authority from them. The Foreign Office’s leaders, past and present, like Lord Macdonald, have reduced our ambassador network to being postboxes for centrally crafted policy nonsense. Foreign Office HQ doesn’t practice mission command or devolution, and ignores the knowledge of our people on the front line. 

I know of at least two ambassadors who were blocked from visiting locations because someone in London, who had never been to either country, decided that it was too risky for “their employees”. Even though I would have thought the ambassadors on the ground are best placed to know. 

Time and time again, the phrase “duty of care” was bounced around meetings by the Foreign Office permanent secretary. It was the “duty of care” mantra that saw us evacuate the Kyiv embassy to Poland when we didn’t need to. 

It was “duty of care” that saw King Charles Street demand that diplomats and military personnel left Sudan, even when we had a benign foothold in Port Sudan. 

But if the duty of care matra didn’t get you, the overwhelming desire by Foreign Office mandarins to not upset anyone saw us time and again fail to take sides. I remember when I decided we should show solidarity with Poland as Belarus started shoving immigrants through its border. Over dinner with my Polish counterpart, we agreed to send 100 Royal Engineers to the border. 

I found out later that the Foreign Office had prepared advice trying to stop it for fear of “provoking the leader of Belarus”. Luckily, the Ministry of Defence moved quicker than King Charles Street and we were already there. And our excellent ambassador in country had also rejected such nonsense. But it still didn’t stop some muppet suggesting that British troops remove their Union Jacks. 

At times, the department seemed more excited by being the “pen holder” of some minor sub-committee at the UN than it did standing up for Britain’s national interest. It was viewed as almost vulgar to be nationalistic. We got to the point in the Ministry of Defence where we called the Foreign Office “the pencil case”, so great was its desire to be seen to be something in the UN. 

But these positions catch up with you. If you stand for nothing, you end up eventually being found out. And this week, in the Security Council, the Foreign Office was found out. In what world was it the correct thing to do to stand in silence for the Iranian president? A man who ordered the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of innocent Iranians during the aftermath of the Revolution. A man who exported drones to Russia and Hamas to kill our allies and friends.

The world is once again dividing between liberal democracies and authoritarian states. Britain has genuine enemies, yet it seems the Foreign Office doesn’t want to recognise that. I used to argue in security committees with those in the Foreign Office that Putin had already started playing chess. 

“The game’s afoot,” I would say. The only decision we need to make is whether we want a checkmate or stalemate. China also started playing this game a long, long time ago. The Foreign Office would prefer that unpalatable fact to be wished away. 

Pity those diplomats who know it but are prevented from doing anything about it by the centre. Pity the MI6 officers who know how to play chess but aren’t allowed to. And pity all those people looking to the UK for action who instead get nothing. 

There still are excellent diplomats out there. For too long foreign secretaries and ambassadors have been held back by a culture more interested in consensus and health and safety than actually being agents for our national interest. There is a saying “nothing ventured nothing gained”. It is time the Foreign Office started to play the great game once more.

Rt Hon Ben Wallace MP is a former defence secretary