Foreign Office flogs off £1bn of buildings

It was Norman Tebbit who joked that the Ministry of Agriculture looked after farmers while ‘the job of the Foreign Office is to look after foreigners.’ So Mr S has done some digging and it turns out that the men and women who run FCDO have ensured HM’s government are making a pretty penny or two. Let’s hope it’s not a case of ‘selling the family silver’, to borrow Harold Macmillan’s words…

A Freedom of Information request by The Spectator says that the FCDO has sold off more than £1.1 billion of embassy buildings since 2010. Among them include the surroundings of the Bangkok estate, the Yervan embassy, the partial sale of Guatemala’s office and Tokyo’s famed compound. Among those who complained include Liz Truss – a famed fan of the small state – who warned earlier this year about ‘our historic embassies’ being ‘sold off to fund a bloated domestic budget.