It has been death by a thousand cuts. Over the past 20 years the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), once the imperious “Rolls-Royce of Whitehall”, has been reduced in size, power, influence and prestige to become one of the least attractive and most demoralised of all government departments. Year after year the budget has been shaved, the allowances trimmed, the payroll reduced and the perks abolished. Key staff have left. Embassies have been hollowed out. Historic residences abroad have been sold. The essential key function to provide Britain with cutting-edge intelligence on the policies and intentions of friends and enemies has been sacrificed to the modish wish to bolster the country’s fading prestige and to sniff out export opportunities.
The decline is soon to accelerate. The government has plans to cut FCO staff by 20 per cent by 2025, a move determined entirely by the need to reduce wages in Whitehall. Thus they have targeted a department with few friends, little voter appeal and minimal impact on the daily lives of the electorate. The consequences, however, will be felt in every embassy. There will be fewer staff to negotiate those cherished export deals and to maintain Britain’s presence and performance abroad. Embassies will rely increasingly on locally recruited staff with little feel for the country’s priorities. Rival missions, among allies such as France and Germany or ideological opponents such as Russia and China, will be able to lobby and cajole long before any British diplomat has time or resources to approach foreign governments.
This comes hard on the heels of a glib, boosterish speech by Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, setting out her vision for post-Brexit Britain’s place in the world. It was a vision entirely based on a public relations attempt to bolster morale at home, talk up export opportunities, trumpet recent scientific and technical advances and make freedom a leitmotiv that she believes Britain uniquely celebrates and exemplifies. She managed only one tiny reference to the European Union in her 25-minute lecture. She insisted that Britain was “the greatest country on earth” with “unrivalled influence” that made it the second most-powerful nation. But she did not say how Britain should leverage that influence with allies instead of quarrelling over migrants, fishing and the Northern Ireland protocol. Jingoism is not a policy.
Not only is her vision at odds with the means to be allocated to achieve this new global Britain; it ignores the messy merger of the FCO with the Department for International Development. More than a year after this move, in itself a sensible way of projecting Britain abroad, the merger is still causing anger and resentment. Different pay scales, unresolved lines of authority and culture clashes between two departments have barely been addressed. A churn of officials and junior ministers has disrupted continuity and morale is low. Intrusive and sometimes insulting new vetting procedures only underline the distrust of all those employed in the newly merged FCDO. There have been too many instances of poor performance by the Foreign Office — Afghanistan, quarrels with France, an absence of a British voice in areas such as the Middle East — for faith to be restored by upbeat promises of new alliances and global opportunities. Ms Truss should instead focus on urgent repairs to get the clapped out motor car roadworthy.
