For those of you not paying attention, Craig Murray was HM Ambassador in Uzbekistan before a terrific row with the FCO broke out and his FCO career ended in acrimony.

He did not go quietly. Since then we have had:

I have written about this case on several occasions, most recently here and here. See the Craig Murray Saga blogoir index tag for the whole lot.

This Blog is all about the interface between Policy and Practice. I spent most a long FCO career overseas. Here I try to describe in different ways my own practitioner’s grappling with the practical and moral aspects of attaching British Foreign Policy to Real Life. And I draw from that experience wider conclusions about the technical/operational features of democracy, and of policy and public life in general.

I also since leaving the FCO on early retirement have had intermittent friendly contact with Craig Murray himself, to explore whether he would be interested in joining me in a public debate on all these questions. Craig has been travelling, so no decision taken.

Before that while we were in the FCO together I did not know Craig personally, but of course followed his Uzbekistan adventures as an insider with keen interest from my then vantage-points in Belgrade and Warsaw.

Along with every FCO diplomat I was fascinated to know what was ‘really’ going on; I talked to various FCO colleagues involved in the high-profile matter as and when I encountered them, so I have a sense of some aspects which have not been given a public airing for one reason or the other.

But broadly speaking I have no special insider insight/knowledge other than my own long years toiling at the diplomatic coalface, mainly in post-communist Europe.  

Anyway, Craig suggested that before opining further on his case I should read his book. Which arrived yesterday. Half read so far.

I am going to review this book. Not in one major piece, which would be unmanageable, and (worse) unreadable. Rather in stages, to bring out where I think Craig got it right and (more often) where he got it wrong. 

My unique selling point will be to explain what the book shows about the way the FCO/Whitehall policy system works and how Craig set about his Uzbekistan task, drawing on his own words.

A lot of what follows will be critical. But it can not be dismissed as some sort of belated hatchet-job on Craig Murray by the Establishment.

My own FCO career featured numerous maverick moments. I was known if not notorious for blunt, provocative and even tendentious analysis, work liked by Ministers but dismissed by many serious people as irretrievably self-indulgent.

Yet I somehow moved upwards, one of the few diplomats this century from any country to have achieved three prominent Ambassadorships before a 50th birthday.

So I am as well placed as anyone to offer in-depth thoughts on Craig Murray’s own definitive and considered account of how he crashed from the FCO.

All right, all right. Just get on with it.

I will.