Back to the Foreign Office for the annual Memorial gathering to remember colleagues who fell in the line of duty. 2015 here. This year Boris Johnson led the ceremony at the foot of the Grand Staircase for his first time. He gave a nicely worked speech – he has a […]
Well. As soon as my back is turned in The Hague it all happens. Here is the piece I wrote for PunditWire on the eve of the US presidential elections: Maybe as a former ambassador myself I am over-sensitive when it comes to what our political leaders say when standing […]
My latest piece for DIPLOMAT mulls over the problems the world faces in dealing with Bad Leaders. Some of them contain their Badness within their own borders, thrashing their own people because they can. Others spread their badness and create havoc for others. Thus: The last century gave the world […]
Here is my piece in the Telegraph (newspaper and website hurrah) on the glum state of the UK’s foreign policy machinery: What does it mean for a nation to exert “influence”? Partly it’s about attitude: the confidence and determination to push hard and long for national objectives. But it’s also […]
Here’s my latest piece on Russia over at the Daily Telegraph: Back in 1902, future mass murderer Vladimir Ilyich Lenin published his pamphlet “What Is To Be Done?” (Что делать?) about the selfish reluctance of the working classes to rise up against capitalism. Now 114 years later, some Western governments ponder what needs […]
Question. You somehow stumble on Batman’s secret identity. You conclude that you’d like to profit from this situation. How best to get a good result for yourself? How might this work from the point of view of negotiation technique? Here is one approach. It does not end well. The text of […]
So here I was in hot Abu Dhabi explaining some finer points of public speaking technique to the excellent colleagues of the Emirates Diplomatic Academy: Nice body language, intensity and eye contact haha. The chart behind me is intended to convey the Core Idea of my approach. In looking at […]
The parable of the chicken and the pig: Question In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig? Answer The Chicken is involved. The Pig is committed. Thus Syria. The West in general and Europe in particular is somewhere between ‘implicated’ and ‘involved’, if only by being […]
Former UK ambassador Craig Murray too has a sharp new website look. He goes from strength to strength despite some sad family news, and credit is definitely due: We seem to be hitting peak Craig Murray. Before the hiatus of the last month or so, 40,000 people were regularly reading […]
I volunteer to give a talk at Crawf Minima’s school on International Organisations and suchlike. Which takes us towards a familiar theme here: Integration v Disintegration – what happens when international borders melt? It turns out that European borders have melted and re-formed and then re-melted and re-formed quite a […]
