Foreign Office struggles to mind its Mandarin

The Foreign Office was once described as a ‘palace of dreams’, yet these days it seems increasingly like a graveyard full of nightmares. Just weeks after the Gaza ceasefire, the outbreak of a tariff war in America is just another fresh headache for the Sir Humphreys of Whitehall. Yet with Trump returning to the White House, our elected Labour overlords have decided that now is the perfect time to reset Britain’s relations with both Europe and China. Talk about having your work cut out…

The Foreign Office’s work has been made harder by the declining number of foreign language speakers in its department. Mr S has done some digging to see how language levels compare to ten years’ ago. And, sadly, newly obtained figures reveal that the number of fluent Mandarin speakers passing exams within the Foreign Office has more than halved in less than a decade. 

A Freedom of Information request by Steerpike showed that there were just 22 British diplomats with exam passes for the ‘gold standard’ certification in Mandarin, known as C1, down from 45 in 2016.