Not for nothing was England once known as ‘Perfidious Albion’ – it would change policy stances more often than a modern quick-change model on a catwalk. Ah yes, those days when foreign policy was as reliably firm as blancmange in a microwave set on high. But not nowadays, of course.
No, Foreign Secretaries and their FCO policy officials who devise and draft policy these post-Great Game days can be relied upon to issue policy that is robustly embedded in the nine points of policy-making as set down by the Cabinet Office and the Better Regulation Executive (BRE). To which all Government Departments abide by, thanks to the Civil Servants who have attended the National School of Government’s long policy course, and who bring their newly learned policy formulation skills back to their Departments.
For example, one of the nine points is the evidence base. If the cake is burnt, next time turn oven down, if the crèche is getting closer, pull up joystick and avoid crashing plane into school etc. Evidence-based policy making, therefore, is still A Good Thing.
So why is it then, that successive post-WW2 UK FCO policy officials have been so spectacularly good at learning policy formulation, yet are so persistently bad at applying what they learn? This new coalition Government did cause me to hope that Things would Change. Alas, the nine points of policy making are shown the door yet again, after the briefest warming of chapped theoretical hands by the new bluish-yellow fire.
Take, for example, any State or foreign Government where such things as rule of law, unlawful imprisonment without charge or trial, no freedom of movement and so on- you know the rest – are routinely scorned. The FCO policy reaction is, naturally, ramped up by degree, according to the lack of response from the said foreign power. Critical dialogue I think it’s called – being a ‘critical friend’. If that doesn’t work, then there is the nuclear option of immediate sanctions, trade embargoes and the like. The evidence base for this policy is that it actually works, as a last-resort foreign policy option – South Africa is the example here of course. And for persistent infringement of international humanitarian law and human rights law, there is the entirely moral example of UK sanctions against the Burmese junta for their treatment of the heroically modest Aung Sang Suu Kyi. Good stuff.
But there is one country alone on this planet where uttering its name causes the FCO policy body to suddenly do the opposite and snap into all the alertness of a mesmerised automaton; mention of which country makes the FCO chuck out all nine points of policy-making as though each were nine reincarnations of Thomas a Becket. A country where rule of law applies to one race only, where there are 27 laws on the country’s statute books that favour one race over another, where the other race has no freedom of movement, freedom of expression, or freedom of association; where child arrests and detention without charge or trial are routine, and where shooting dead of nosy but totally innocent foreign nationals is shrugged off.
And, predictably, the foreign policy of our Roosevelt-like ‘New Deal’ Government is now reassuming automaton mode in relation to the country in question, with Nick Clegg having to significantly neuter a morally upstanding and utterly just Party policy approach agreed at the 2009 national Conference. Why? The price of a seat probably – who knows? Either way, the body politic is now once more a zombie, dead to the nine points of policy-making, especially the evidence base.
The morally indefensible FCO policy response to Ministerial Correspondence and DWO (Deal With Officially) correspondence on questions pertaining to the country in question, about sanctions, international humanitarian law and human rights law, racial discrimination and so on, is that evidence-based policy-making does not and must not apply to the country in question. Because, the line goes, sanctions don’t work (Burma? South Africa?)and anyway this country is our ‘strategic partner’. Ah, so that’s all right, then.
This two-faced stance is one of such monumental hypocrisy that one could be forgiven for thinking the FCO policy drafters are in the pay of the Devil himself. So what?
Well, there is a moral price we all pay for our country’s foreign political perfidious moral blindness and totally illogical automaton approach, because the craven and obsequious policy stance towards this country, causes continued anger among Muslims worldwide, And as a policy official myself, the FCO policy approach towards this country simply beggars policy belief.
So the FCO’s fawning approach to the country in question has wider implications for UK plc. As someone about to go off to Helmand soon again, what answer do I give to Muslims there who ask me, as they did when I was there last year, why the UK Government condemned South Africa, condemns Burma, yet turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to Israeli breaches of international humanitarian law, UN Resolutions and human rights law, thereby supporting Israel in its illegal occupation of Palestine? How do I explain the FCO policy rationale to them, Mr Hague?
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