Here’s the full text of a letter I have sent to The Times on the idea that the Foreign Office budget be slashed by 25% or more. Published today. I don’t yet know how much they used – they’re paywalled!

Sir,

The values and institutions that have defined world order since 1945 are under siege, as whole new categories of security threat appear faster than governments can respond. Borders across the Middle East and here in Europe are fraying, with grimly massive human costs. The European Union is faltering, and the UK’s EU membership may end.

How does our Conservative government respond to such global uncertainty? By planning to slash spending on UK diplomacy.

Over the past 20 years UK international spending has lurched hugely in favour of development spending, and away from sharp-end diplomacy. The effective money delivering our diplomatic network and the people running it is now some £700 million a year, or just twice what DfID spends every year in Ethiopia. The UK has fewer diplomats than the DVLA has employees.

Yet the Chancellor wants to cut the FCO’s budget even further – by 25%, maybe more. Anything remotely like this will force many embassies and high commissions to close, and remaining missions to lose local respect and impact. We will risk having a Cheshire Cat diplomatic service: a supercilious smile attached to nothing much.

We are one of the world’s richest countries and growing well, but vital British interests are threatened on all sides. The old cliché jeers that the UK wants to ‘punch above its weight’. Do we really need to punch so far below it?

Punchy.