As I have previously noted, Diplomatic Blogging by serving diplomats is fraught with complications:

The point is that under the way our democracy functions British diplomats can’t work like that. Nor do they. Anything close to being critical or tendentious or spikey or provocative is likely to annoy either a host government or HQ or both.

Which helps explain why this piece by HM Ambassador to North Korea Peter Hughes about the cheery atmosphere prevailing during North Korea’s elections has gone down badly, to the point of being rubbished in the Evening Standard by Paul Waugh:

In a manner that would have George Orwell spinning in his grave, Hughes describes election day in the totalitarian state as if it were a festival of democracy. Forget the Axis of Evil, forget labour camps, secret police, a nation nearly reduced to starvation only a few years ago. No, it’s a veritable Butlins here in the DPRK.

Peter Hughes’ subsequent explanation is alas unconvincing.

Basically, he got this trite exercise in ‘public diplomacy’ badly wrong, reminding me of an earlier very high profile example of a senior British diplomat failing to Grasp the Point.

Methinks the FCO should have another look at this blogging by its officials – the laboured blandness of most of the output strikes a bizarre and even self-defeating note?