The Foreign and National Flagellation Office

British panjandrums promote a future of soft powerlessness

The Grand Staircase, UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London

This is an expanded version of my column in The Times (UK) (£) today.

In this era of mandatory self-flagellation over “white privilege,” it was always likely that Britain’s Foreign Office would find itself in the cross-hairs of those who want to cancel the west. 

After all, since it was created in 1782 the Foreign Office — whose full title became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1968 — has been the government department responsible for relations with almost the whole of Abroad. So it would be required to atone for the sins of empire and colonialism. The fact that the colonies were actually dealt with by a separate department called the Colonial Office is dismissed as irrelevant. The Colonial Office is no more, having disappeared with the end of British…er, colonialism. So as an anti-colonialist punchbag, the Foreign Office will just have to do.

Living up to expectations, a new pamphlet recommends that the Foreign Office should be abolished because it’s a relic of Britain’s imperial past. So far, so tediously predictable. Except, however, for the authors.