The Foreign Office has been criticised as ‘elitist and rooted in the past’ in a scathing report by some of the UK’s most senior former senior diplomats and officials. The report, entitled ‘The World in 2040: Renewing the UK’s approach to International Affairs’, has been penned by the former cabinet secretary Lord Sedwill; a former director general at the Foreign Office, Moazzam Malik; and the former Number 10 foreign policy adviser Tom Fletcher, among others. It certainly doesn’t pull any punches.
The authors suggest the Foreign Office should be abolished and replaced by a new Department for International Affairs with ‘fewer colonial era pictures on the wall’
The department is ‘struggling to deliver a clear mandate, prioritisation and resource allocation.’ This is mandarin-speak for saying the Foreign Office is simply not fit for purpose. The authors criticise the merger of the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development to create the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) as largely a failure.
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