A reader in Malta sent me this interesting article from the Times of Malta about allegations that a Maltese diplomat based in Libya gave the British important secrets back in 1971. Thus: Ives de Barro – working at the Maltese Embassy in Libya in 1971 – was giving the British […]
Election Day across the UK looms. The Labour Party are set to lose power. Hurrah. But will they lose badly enough to be obliterated? Or somehow only enough to stay in business and start scheming anew after some ritual blood-letting? Here’s my own New Labour Story. I joined the FCO […]
If (as is surely the case) you want an easy link to my recent pieces for DIPLOMAT magazine, here it is.
The Heresiarch links to my thoughts on the FCO and its Popegate scandal, but wonders if I have it right – maybe the causes are … even deeper: It’s easy enough to blame New Labour, with its love of targets and hatred of anything traditional or elitist, for this sort […]
Tim Collard, (a retired British diplomat who spent most of his career in China and Germany. He is an active member of the Labour Party) offers a jeer in the Telegraph at William Hague’s sensible comment on the FCO Popegate fiasco: William Hague, who expects to be in charge in King […]
I did not get it quite right in ascribing responsibility for the FCO/Pope fiasco to young officer Steven Mulvain. It looks instead as if a more senior colleague, one Anjoum Noorani, is the Guilty Man. Here is the Telegraph account: Mr Noorani, who, like Mr Mulvain, is a graduate of […]
The leak of the supposedly droll FCO email suggesting ‘far-fetched’ ideas for the programme of the Pope’s State Visit to the UK has prompted a flurry of comment. Yesterday I had an exchange with an FCO colleague to ask who was responsible for the email and was told that the […]
The FCO has been quick off the mark to get on its website a piece about the ‘small explosion’ near the car of HM Ambassador in Yemen this morning. And, stop the presses, there is to be a new UK Ambassador in Macedonia. Yet nothing appears there under News on […]
Update: More here. * * * * * Looking this morning on the FCO’s website for the official statement of grovelling apology over the infamous Pope Visit memo, I spotted this horror: 12 Feb: The Chandler’s – FCO’s position misrepresented Under Latest News, nothing. So, over to the mainsteam media. […]
President Lech Kaczynski and Maria Kaczynska have been buried with the highest Polish honours in Cracow. Some memories of people whom I knew on the doomed flight to Smolensk. Such as former young communist Jerzy Smajdzinski who adapted well to democracy and rose to become Poland Defence Minister. I recall […]
