A reader not unreasonably draws attention to a link in my previous post to a fascinating original FCO document reporting a conversation with Craig Murray.

He  wonders whether diplomats who ‘temper’ their reporting themselves create the impression that others who report more passionately are the only FCO people with a conscience.

In other words, those dwelling in the Land of the Mute and Timid should not condemn as unnecessarily/improperly noisy a rare someone who speaks clearly.

Interesting. Not a point I had thought about in this immediate context – as an ex-FCO insider who knows Simon Butt (we joined on the same day back in 1979) but not Craig Murray, I read Butt’s minute with a very different eye.

The professional point raised is in fact subtle. Here goes.

Officials are paid to report and to offer their analysis and judgement.

Officials’ views and judgements sent in to HMG from far-flung posts may not coincide with those of their official colleagues at HQ, or more importantly with those of elected Ministers.

Quite right too.

Those in HQ tend to lack the feel for what is happening in other countries, and what that might mean for future developments. But they know a lot about what is in the public eye in the UK. And the public pay everyone’s wages.

In turn someone who pores day and night over the intricate goings-on in Uzbekistan (or Poland or Serbia or Paraguay) knows a heck of lot about all that, but maybe risks losing a sense of where that country fits into the great scheme of the foreign policy aims which the British Government of the day are pursuing.

So a dynamic synthesis emerges.

A skilful diplomat overseas manages (a) to keep HQ alert to the implications of local developments where s/he is posted, and (b) is consistently persuasive on what (if anything) we should be doing by way of response.

And good officials back home need to keep an open mind – part of their job too is to warn Ministers of troubles perhaps to come.

Achieving that synthesis intelligently in practice depends on a lot of factors, not least personalities which come and go, as well as other Big Issues at the time.

Plus the hard fact is that for British Ministers some places are just more important than others.

Greeks and Turks in many constituencies have some votes, and are voluble on the subject of Cyprus. The Uzbek community in the UK (if one even exists) has no such profile or weight.

So wooing Ministers and the system away from immediate problems causing them operational grief now to spend time on likely problems some way down the road is a struggle to be waged with guile, patience and insight. Maybe, above all, with good networked teamwork.

In short, when good diplomats ‘temper’ their work it is not because they are spineless or unambitious, although perhaps some can be.

It is in part because they know that it is not enough to be Right – in a democratic system where so many clever and urgent ideas buzz about, you have also to be Effective and Convincing.

And that if you strive too hard to show that your insights are uniquely important, you may just overdo the adverbs and rhetoric and lose your HQ audience.

A bit like a noisy belligerent orator at Speakers Corner – fleetingly amusing with some good points, but if the tone and content do not vary the crowd drift away.

So read the excellent FCO documents on Craig’s site with all that in mind.

If you had any thoughts about how he and the FCO fell out so spectacularly and what it all meant, do you find your mind changing a bit – one way or the other?