In today's Telegraph we have the considered and undiluted view of 'our man in the FO', Charles Crawford, actually he's ex-FO now but was formerly HM Ambassador in Sarajevo (1996-1998), in Belgrade (2001-2003) and most recently in Poland (2003-2007). However, my legal advisors, Messrs, Whyte, Lippe & Tremblin, have advised that I should issue a Health Warning because reading his piece of unbelievably smooth, wrinkle-free tripe could be dangerous if you already suffer from heart or blood pressure problems!
Faced with the current crisis in Europe this ex-mandarin steals his advice from Cpl. Jones - don't panic and don't do nuffin'! Had he been at the helm of the Titanic, no doubt this worthy would have advised playing with a straight bat and steering a straight course and for goodness sake pay no attention to the warning signs.
Reading this endless flow of utterly smooth and sophisticated policy options I realise that no where, not once, not even hinted at, is there any suggestion that we should simply walk! We live in a global world in which information, which equals money, travels at the speed of light. Out entire history is one of global trading not regional encumbrances, but this Grand Panjandrum insists that our future is irrevocably tied to this "German racket"! And I know, don't ask me how, I just know, deep down in my guts, that he and his sort are the ones forever whispering into our government's collective ear. The only slightly good news is that he gets a very well-deserved slapping in the comments thread.
"Had he been at the helm of the Titanic, no doubt this worthy would have advised playing with a straight bat and steering a straight course": there is a school of thought that the Titanic's skipper's big mistake was to fail to do precisely that. If she'd hit head-on, she mihgt have survived because that's what she'd been designed to cope with. By stiking a glancing blow, she was ripped along much of her length and therefore the segregation by compartments didn't work.
Mind you, that has little to do with the weasels of the FO.
Posted by: dearieme | Sunday, 13 November 2011 at 21:52
You're an education, DM, I never knew that.
Posted by: David Duff | Monday, 14 November 2011 at 09:17
Something very nasty happened at the Foreign Office in WW1. I don't know what it was but the effect was to turn the FO from acting in our interests vis a vis the rest of the world to acting in foreigners' interests vis a vis us. For instance, pre WW2, apart from a (very) few officials (eg Vansittart), the FO were appeasers to the core. Post WW2 the FO has been euroloony central and has based all its policy recommendations on the presumption that we become and remain part of the "project". The FO wanted (and AFAIAA still wants) to dump the Falklands and, on the FO's behalf, Carrington took the honourable lumps.
In most situations, the FO's sole negotiation tactic is to start out saying "yes" and then asking politely how much that will cost. It is useless; it is craven; it consistently betrays our national interest: sounds very much like the BBC.
Posted by: Umbongo | Tuesday, 15 November 2011 at 17:48