Foreign Office staffing cuts make Global Britain a bad joke

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is poised to reduce its staffing levels by 20 per cent over the next four years, or so the country’s civil servants have reportedly been told by managers.

As of now, the FCDO employs some 17,300 personnel, roughly one third of whom are diplomats and full-time support staff, with the other two thirds made up of locally recruited workers employed in overseas missions. A one-fifth cull would mean that by 2025 the total would have dropped to 13,850. 

What does this say about the Government’s commitment to Global Britain? The country’s armed forces are already reduced to their lowest levels since the early 1930s. The regular army is just 79,000 strong. In the US, the Marine Corps on its own has a strength of 181,000. The Navy ended up with six destroyers instead of the 12 originally promised, and our two aircraft carriers, Prince of Wales and Queen Elizabeth, are likely to deploy fewer jets than are typically carried by an American Wasp-class assault ship less than two thirds their size.  

Now the Foreign Office, with a current budget (excepting that associated with development aid) of little more than £1 billion, has joined the military in austerity’s front line. Every embassy and high commission is expected to come up with cuts. The fact that the service is already struggling to meet the demands of Brexit and increased global instability is apparently of no account. 

“Do more on less” is the new mantra. Fly the flag but take the bus. 

Some would argue that this is a good thing and that we should cut our suit according to our cloth. Yet last week, foreign secretary Liz Truss, fresh from her photo-opportunity in the turret of one of the army’s 200 remaining tanks, felt able to boast in a speech to the great and good of Chatham House that Britain today has “unrivalled influence in the world”. We had, she said, signed trade deals with more than 70 countries since Brexit (nearly all of them, in fact, roll-overs from our years of EU membership) and were set to “step forward, proud of who we are and what we stand for, ready to shape the world anew”. 

Poppycock. Pure fantasy. 

Truss was no less gung-ho on the military front. Having reminded her audience at Chatham House, mostly made up of former diplomats and soldiers, with an overlay of academics and journalists, that Britain had been first to impose sanctions on Belarus, she later “warned” Vladimir Putin that if he dared to invade Ukraine, the consequences for him and Russia would be grave. It is tempting to conjecture that she knew not what steps exactly the UK would take, but that they would be the terror of the Earth. 

I noted earlier that an argument can be made for Britain as a prosperous, middle-sized country that brings to the table a long history of involvement in global politics and war. But the Britain of 2021 is not the Britain of 1815, 1918, or even 1945. In the 18th century, we were able to conquer India. A hundred years later, we humiliated China and went on to add one third of Africa and the Middle East to our colonial possessions. The loyal dominions – Canada, Australia and New Zealand – faithfully stood by us in time of war. 

Now fast-forward to the world as it is. India carries more weight in international affairs than the UK and is about to overtake us as the world’s fifth-largest economy. Given that it has a population of more than one billion, this is hardly surprising. China, having dismissed us, literally, as a postage-stamp country, is these days so far ahead of us in every sphere that its leaders and major corporations barely acknowledge our existence. Africa has long-since shaken us loose, while the “dominions” go their own way, owing us no favours, closer to Washington than to London when the chips are down. 

We could adjust to our altered status and quite possibly profit from it. There is little kudos in being the world’s policeman (or in our case the world’s reserve constable); nor is there much advantage to be gained from overspending on the military without ever having the heft to make a difference. The United Kingdom in 2025, with Brexit finally in the rear mirror, could content itself to be an inventive and productive economy, with an army, navy and air force appropriate to our size and a Foreign Office devoted mainly to bilateral issues, usually to do with trade, defence, culture and human rights. 

We would enjoy increased respect and, in many of the world’s capitals, even an enhanced measure of affection. Our embassy parties (unlike those in Downing Street) are legend, as is the ability of our diplomats to display their Rolls-Royce professional skills while still somehow lightening the mood. 

Making ’em laugh is no small accomplishment, and we’re good at it, a quality we share with the Irish and Australians. 

But there is an alternative point of view. The UK could decide to build three more destroyers, say, as well as six more frigates, a hundred more tanks and two-hundred drones (or whatever else might take the top-brass’s fancy). It could pour hard-earned cash into the long-term programme to build a new generation of fighter-bombers for the RAF. It could increase the strength of the Marines from 7,500 to 12,000 and the SAS from 500 to 1,000. The cost? Enormous. The impact? Debatable. 

Or, alongside a little of the above, it could choose to beef up its embassies instead of cutting them back, not only in Asia and Africa, but across Europe, increasing the clout ascribed to those countries with the biggest representations. Our Men (or increasingly Women) in the world’s capitals have to be seen not only as first-class in themselves (which is still overwhelmingly the case) but as heading first-class sets of colleagues and subordinates, each of them an expert in their field.

None of our historic embassies should be sold. Instead, top architects should be commissioned to add to the stock. 

None of the following capitals should ever be other than fully staffed: Washington, Berlin, Paris, Brussels (for the EU), Rome, Madrid, Dublin, Ankara, Moscow, Tokyo, Beijing, New Delhi, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Cairo, Tel-Aviv, Ottawa, Mexico City, Brasilia, Buenos Aires, Riyadh, Dubai, Rabat, Canberra and Wellington. The same should apply to New York (for the UN) and Geneva (for the UN and the WTO). Elsewhere, headcounts should tick up, not down, especially where old friends are involved, such as the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway, Ghana, Singapore and Oman. If it costs money, find the money. An increase of 50 per cent in the FCO budget would cost half a billion pounds (chicken-feed in today’s government accounting) and would be money well spent.

I guarantee it: the return on investment for every trained diplomat will be at least that of an F35 jet costing £100 million – and the diplomat is unlikely to end up in the drink. Granted, a commercial counsellor who speaks Chinese, Arabic or Russian is unlikely to prove an obvious asset once the fighting starts. But the same counsellor, as part of a team experienced in the art of making friends and breaking down barriers, is likely to make war that little bit less certain.

We used to be proud to fly the flag. We can’t afford to forget how it’s done, and part of that is doing it by the numbers.