Poor old Foreign Office. The imperial roar has become a squeak. All the wrong pictures adorn its walls, and the wrong attitudes its mindset. And now even its own are turning against it. A new report, aimed at a forthcoming Labour government, demands a complete rebuild. Written by three senior ex-diplomats, including the former cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill, it dismisses their old department as “somewhat elitist and rooted in the past”, and “like a giant private office for the foreign secretary of the day, responding to the minister’s immediate concerns and ever-changing in-tray”.
The report demands a new office to handle all the country’s overseas affairs, including trade, aid, cultural relations and the climate crisis. It should also modernise its Whitehall palace, one that used to rule an empire and makes Downing Street look like an annexe. When, in 1859, Lord Palmerston rejected Gilbert Scott’s design for a gothic Foreign Office, he demanded instead one that would evoke the spirit of imperial Rome, not “the barbarism of the dark ages”. That is what he got – a building whose very murals were meant to make the world quake.
The Foreign Office has never quite kicked the habit. It has always been pontification central. Its favourite comment on whatever ails the world is that it is “unacceptable to Britain”, as if that made a jot of difference. James Cleverly visited Beijing as foreign secretary last summer, declaring that “it would be a mistake to isolate China”. It echoed the famous forecast, “Fog in Channel, continent cut off.” Boris Johnson’s bombastic bid to make Britain great on the world stage by sending aircraft carriers to the South China Sea was exactly the posturing that Sedwill describes as causing “the bewilderment of our allies and the glee of our adversaries”. It was merely a leader auditioning for a bit part as world statesman.
The report calls for foreign affairs to be recast as economic as much as political. Britain now confronts an insulted and rejected Europe and a possibly isolationist America. It cannot still pose as a poor man’s world policeman, brandishing military interventions and economic sanctions. Old alliances and prejudices must be succeeded by new multilateral relations. Britain’s stance abroad must be primarily as a guardian of its interests.
Some of the report’s suggestions jar with its hard-nosed pragmatism. Its plea for more foreign aid – the most chaotic and ill-audited of budgets – sits oddly with its demand for better “prioritisation and resource allocation”. It largely leaves defence out of account. But it does emphasise soft power – British universities, the arts, sport and the English language – the importance of which cannot be overstated. I recall on a visit to India being told that, in India’s eyes, the British Council outranked the Foreign Office. Culture should sit alongside trade as a leading function of an overseas department, ahead of the Foreign Office’s running commentary on world affairs and the self-important “instilling of British values”.
As the report states, Britain is not a world power but an “offshore, mid-sized” country. It should equip itself to behave like one. Over to Starmer.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
