Pity the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Once supreme in Whitehall, King Charles Street is now a frail and damaged place, bleeding power and purpose from multiple wounds. It is emasculated by the interference of No. 10 and the drift towards a common EU foreign and security policy while the sun sets on our time as a first-rank power-projecting country. All this leaves the FCO seeking a raison d’être. But in climate change, it may have found one.
The political orthodoxy on the environment has now been woven into the very purpose of the Foreign Office. In the peculiar dialect of management-speak employed in Whitehall, its work is defined and directed by eight ‘departmental strategic objectives’. One of them now commits British diplomacy to ‘promote a low-carbon, high-growth global economy’.
Those are not just words.
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