Russia chooses a new President tomorrow, 2 March. Without OSCE observers. When did Russia’s leadership start to tip away from seeing European Democracy as the Solution, towards seeing it as a Problem? Maybe around 6 May 1996. In the UK it was a Bank Holiday Monday morning; we expected a normal working […]
My mentioning of Marsport reminded me of another Mars moment in my life. It came in early November 2005. I had sent an email to the FCO team in which I attempted to explain what had happened in Polish politics that previous week, when the wrangling following Poland’s 2005 Parliamentary […]
I had the great pleasure of meeting Bill Buckley back in July 2005, a day after the terrorist bombings in London. He personified the existential far opposite of that nihilistic violence. A calm, positive, witty, astute, sophisticated and reasonable man who lived for and through ideas. Above all specific and profound ideas […]
Back in 2006 I had an amicable email joust with London on the subject of our Balkans policy, consistency or otherwise thereof. The point was made by HQ that the FCO would be a depressing place if we did not have lively disagreements or felt that our policy was watertight. To […]
Nazism or Communism? Which was ‘worse’? And why? I sent the FCO some thoughts on this subject when I was HM Ambassador in Warsaw. I pointed out that today’s Europe would look and feel rather different if Hitler was lying embalmed in Berlin just as Lenin lies creepily in Moscow. […]
A controversy over David Cameron’s supposed views on a British Government-supported programme to take sixth form pupils to Poland to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp complex has drawn attention to that programme which has been ticking over already in different forms for some nine years. This programme is a Good Thing, even if the […]
The time is coming when the full story of my leaked email about the EU Budget and a Chinese alarm-clock will have to be told. For now just to say that the story frisked round the Internet for a short while. I alas was not famous for even fifteen minutes. More like two […]
As well as obviously political or protest songs put out down the years, there are plenty which draw in an explicit or implicit way rather on the language and practice of diplomacy. And the time has come for a former senior diplomatic practitioner (ie me) to draw the planet’s attention to […]
Once upon a time supporting human rights included defending free speech, even if it was speech one did not much like or welcome. This also included presenting moderation and self-restraint as ends in themselves. Promoting the profound and difficult idea that rational, reasonable, constructive, positive ends would not be achieved by irrational, unreasonable, destructive, negative means. […]
The performance of the senior MEPs who are trying very hard indeed to limit access to a damaging report on MEPs’ possible abuse of expenses is at once revealing and disturbing on so many levels that one scarcely knows where to start offering a view on it. Suffice for now […]
