The Foreign Office has lost sight of the national interest

RESIGNED from the Foreign Office last week after serving for more than a decade as a senior British diplomat.

- Ameer Kotecha Guest columnist

It was a privileged career and I was proud to serve King and country abroad, including as head of the British Consulate in Russia from 2023-25, at the forefront of one of the great challenges to our national security.But for all the Foreign Office’s opportunities and adventure, I eventually — and with a heavy heart — chose to resign. Why? Because I came to the conclusion that the department and the Civil Service more broadly, are broken and in need of fundamental reform.

At a time when the world is more dangerous than it has been in decades, the Foreign Office carries a heavy responsibility: to guide our country through these choppy waters, to maintain our alliances, to defend our overseas territories, to ensure our friends value us and our enemies fear us.

And yet rather than a singular focus on these priorities, the Foreign Office I saw was often hopelessly distracted by corporate bureaucracy, inward navel-gazing and woke excesses.

Of course, all large organisations have some bureaucracy.