Description: From arse to elbow. A blog about politics, economics, football, films, music and various other stuff that catches my fancy. Dave Timoney.
Simon McDonald, the former Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Head of the Diplomatic Service, to give him his full title, has made a downbeat assessment of the UK's place in the world and its geopolitical prospects in the New Statesman . Given that venue, he was happy to personalise the narrative of decline and pronounce on the calibre of Conservative politicians: "When I started [in 1981], your typical minister had served quite a long apprenticeship, coming into cabinet wi
According to the interviewer, Harry Lambert, "The UK’s fading position in the world has deeper causes than its recent foreign secretaries", but while true this is to confuse cause and effect. The decline in the standing of the role, and the consequent use of it to park the troublesome or provide a launchpad for a domestic leadership bid, is a reflection of the UK's dwindling importance in foreign relations and thus the maginalisation of this once great office of state. Consider that the current Foreign Secr
But in no sense can the UK's relative decline in standing be attributed to a lack of virtue on the part of successive foreign secretaries. The unimpressive roster between Straw and Cleverly - Margart Beckett, David Miliband, William Hague, Philip Hammond, Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Dominc Raab and Liz Truss - is certainly a testament to the paucity of talent in the senior reaches of the two main parties, but it also reflects the way the role has come to be seen as a stepping stone, either on the way out o