The Foreign Office must rebuild its place in Europe

The day after the 2016 referendum I wrote about the need for Britain, post-Brexit, to strengthen its embassies across Europe, where, because of our membership of the EU, we had cut back on personnel and relied increasingly on Brussels to do the heavy lifting.

By extension (with Nato also having its headquarters in the Belgian capital), this was equally the case when it came to defence and security. The feeling was that so long as our two principal Brussels missions were well staffed, the main function of our embassies elsewhere on the Continent, beyond promoting trade, was to represent the Queen and provide consular assistance to distressed citizens.

This is not to say that jobs in Europe’s capitals are not to be reckoned with and competed for. Who wouldn’t want to spend three or four years, at the taxpayers’ expense, in Rome, Vienna, Lisbon or Prague? And there is serious work to be done in the run-up to cocktails. But you may take it as read that if the result of the referendum had gone the other way, especially by a significant margin, our European embassies would have had only limited utility outside of the areas listed above.

The argument that our embassies and high commissions in Asia, Africa and the Americas are now, more than ever, key outposts in the advance of Global Britain is obviously compelling. The numbers of specialists required, not only in the obvious places – Washington, Tokyo, Beijing, New Dehli and Seoul – but throughout the wider world, including Russia, must rise to meet what it is hoped will be increased interest and demand.

But Europe, on the cusp of momentous change, remains a special case.

As things stand, the UK has embassies in 27 EU countries that need reinforcement if we are to rebuild our credentials as friends and partners in the post-Brexit era. In recent years, the tendency has been to cut back – a commercial counselor here, a first-secretary there, with fewer support staff and a reduced number of high-profile receptions. While it would be an exaggeration to say that European representation was placed on standby in the post-Thatcher years, there was undeniably a run-down that led to many missions becoming little more than extensions of the Government Information Service.

The result of the referendum changed the dynamic, but only for the duration of the negotiations that we are assured will be concluded by the end of this year. Diplomats who, outside of the trade and business sectors, had previously gone through the motions were obliged to turn on the charm in a bid to persuade their host nations that a good deal for the UK would ultimately be just as good for them, and for Europe as a whole.

That role is now on borrowed time. Come next January, short of another U-turn by Boris Johnson, Britain will be well and truly out of the single market and customs union, meaning a sharp drop in the need for soft-soap and less need for Mr Nice Guy. But that will change, unevenly but surely, with the passage of time. British interests, as Palmerston famously said, are eternal and perpetual, and the question will become, how do we deal with 27 European states who in aggregate account for 45 per cent of our foreign trade and whose defence and security is integral to our own? Do we stick with the centralised Brussels model or do we go for a mixture of hub and spoke?

Last autumn it was revealed that the Foreign Office budget was approaching a 20-year low. Our overseas missions accounted for just 0.1 per cent of public sector spending, while, in a reverse of Old School practise, diplomats’s salaries had fallen below those of civil servants in comparable positions.

The prime minister – whose tenure as Foreign Secretary was both undistinguished and short – has promised to increase the department’s budget. He has also brought the foreign aid budget back in-house, which should do much to restore the image of our diplomats in the developing world as potential distributors of largesse.

But in European – EU – terms, it remains to be seen what steps, if any, he will take to add lustre to our faded diplomatic image. This weekend, it was reported that he had instructed Foreign Office staff not to sit close to European representatives at international gatherings. Instead, they are to squeeze in next to their opposite numbers from the US and the Commonwealth, most obviously those of Australia and New Zealand, countries with a combined population less than that of Poland.

This is wrong-headed. If the governments of the Twenty Seven are to be reconciled to Brexit and if our place as part of the European family is not to fall by the wayside, then the closer our interpersonal links, the better for all concerned. Barred from the European Council, the European Commission and the European Parliament, where many decisions affecting us will continue to be made, the least we can do is to ensure that our relationships with the Establishments in each of the member states are in good shape, according us influence behind the scenes that henceforth will be denied to us in public.

Boris Johnson should decree that as a central part of his mooted charm offensive in Europe, every embassy will receive additional staff and a larger operational budget. The Foreign Secretary and his deputies must visit not only Brussels, Paris and Berlin on a regular basis, but a selection each year of the EU’s other capitals. It would also make sense for there to be a full-time minister of state dealing solely with European matters. As it stands, Christopher Pincher, formerly a government whip, with no previous overseas experience, has responsibility for the Americas, north and south, and the rest of Europe and Central Asia, in addition to the EU. What sort of a portfolio is that? How can he possibly give the necessary attention to any of these, still less all of them?

Times have changed. We live in the internet age. The Foreign Office will never again have the reputation or clout it enjoyed a century ago when British ambassadors were privy to most of what was going on in the countries of their appointment and whose reports to King Charles Street were regarded as central to the UK’s view of the world.

But actual one-to-one connections remain important. We can only be truly friends with those we know well and among whom we choose to spend our time. Diplomacy is built on trust. So is trade. So is security. History has shown that the United Kingdom is bound to Europe by ties that go far beyond considerations of a “looser trading environment” or roaming charges. If we let relations with the EU and its member states drop to the second division, we do so at our peril.