Former senior diplomat Sir Christopher Meyer is busy describing what he sees as a decline in the influence and technique of British diplomacy:

New Labour’s obsessive reliance on the alchemy of consultants has infected much of Whitehall. The culture of targets, set by the Treasury, has acquired the madness and mendacity of Soviet statistics.

While I was in Washington as ambassador, from 1997 until 2003, I had to engage in an annual objective-setting exercise. In principle, it is absolutely right to set clear goals for your embassy. But the Foreign Office, throttled by the Treasury’s grip on its budget, insisted on a bureaucratic exercise of elephantine proportions … 

Finally, like the annual promulgation of the theses of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the objectives would be published, often months into the year to which they were meant to apply. They were, for all practical purposes, dead on arrival.

Meantime, we just got on with the job for which there was only one authentic objective: advancing the national interest, using our judgment, common sense and professional skills to work out how to get from A to B.

The Foreign Office website continues to be riddled with the jargon of management consultancy. There is much talk of corporate leadership, audit and risk, business strategies, "change owners" and what appears to be the terrible sin of "change-bunching". Innovation has become a virtue in its own right, as if permanent revolution were necessary for the effectiveness of British foreign policy.

All of which is more than familiar to readers here.

As is the folly mentioned in the article of spending so much taxpayers’ money via DFID to get no foreign policy gains at all. I heard Robin Cook himself say that "hiving DFID off from the FCO was the worst decision we ever made".

A lot of strenuous competition in the Worst Ever New Labour Decision category of course, but, yes, that one is in there towards the top.

Yet as various furious commenters on Sir Christopher’s piece point out, he makes no mention in this article of the European Union and the impact of all that process on the FCO’s capacity both to think and act.

The fact has to be faced. If you think that the EU is an unambiguous force for good, and that all things considered it is better that we do diminish our national foreign policy firepower in favour of European ‘soft power’, at least have the honesty to accept what that means in practice.

A huge erosion of the intellectual capital of the FCO has occurred because people working there know that there is just no point in trying hard to master a subject if the final policy outcome has to be negotiated in some footling Working Group (sic) in Brussels, comprising other representatives of EU member states whose own Ministries’ capacities to offer intelligent and ‘deep’ analysis is often close to nil.

It is in the end all about Values. But also about Confidence.

We are richer than Russia. We have far better and more substantial relations round the world than Russia. We are (usually) better analysts than the Russians – remember the Russian diplomatic fiasco when Milosevic fell and Moscow was taken utterly by surprise? We have equal weight with Russia at the supreme top table of global affairs, the UN Security Council.

But who looks and acts like a world power? Who gives the impression of believing in something, and being prepared to act tough to get it? Of being powerful?

Of thinking that power exists, and is there to be deployed for a national interest?

Of having any national interest at all?

The most scandalous cliche burbled round the FCO and Whitehall corridors and even in public is that the EU is a multiplier of UK influence in the world. Even some people who otherwise appear to be sane are heard to say it.

See here a classic example from 2008, FCO Minister Jim Murphy on Zimbabwe:

We’ve made progress today in a number of areas of foreign policy that are important to the UK and the rest of the EU.

Most notably we got a very clear statement from the EU on Zimbabwe. Ministers from all 27 EU member states expressed their unanimous concern about delays in announcing the election results, about acts of intimidation, violence and other human rights abuses.

Today was busy but well worth it, and the progress we have made in a number of areas a good demonstration that Europe is an essential multiplier of UK influence in the world.

Hurrah. We won an EU statement.

No. No.

No.

The EU is an amazing multiplier of Luxembourg’s influence in the world. And Ireland’s.

And Greece’s (look how Greece for years has stopped the rest of Europe including us calling Macedonia ‘Macedonia’).

When so many countries have views and instincts running against our own – and their positions are being amplified with our own resources (since by spending so much time dealing with countries which have no authority, we diminish our own) – it just can not be true that our influence is multiplied to any significant extent.

On the contrary, in many key foreign policy areas the EU directly diminishes our influence, by forcing us to sign up to lowest common denominator positions at the UN and elsewhere, since to give a clear principled British view would break a carefully negotiated EU consensus which is actually worth nothing since it is so trivial. 

This process brings us to pull our national punches and disincentivises movement of internal resources to where we might make a strategic difference. And it leads to appalling confusion eg in the way we (don’t) speak out strongly at the UN Human Rights Council.

Not to mention examples where the UK once would have seized a strong and active position, but because New Labour had no PR interest in getting stuck in we left the EU to ‘take the lead’ (see eg the absence of real UK involvement in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine). Belarus?

Maybe there is some perverse benefit in having the nascent EU External Action Service launched if that leads to an end to wasting precious time in EU Working Group processes in Brussels, with the top national capitals dealing directly with the new High Representative’s office instead. Or not.

So, whereas I look with some confidence to William Hague to start to put at least some of this right, I worry that the sheer extent of the stupidity and decay caused by Labour has done irreparable damage.

And all for what?

So that key Labour people can try to get top jobs for themselves in Brussels as the ship sinks?

Yes.