Representing who to whom?

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According to some Tories, the best way of preventing Nigel Farage from getting elected to a seat in parliament for a five year term is to give him a seat in parliament for life, by sending him to the institution for sufferers of Post Imperial Stress Disorder. The logic is curious, but then logic has long ceased to be their strong point. Others think Farage should be made the official representative of the UK in Washington. And some of the most desperate actually want to do both.

It’s true, of course, that if Trump were to be re-elected in November, he would be quite keen on the idea of having Farage as the UK ambassador. Doubtless, Farage would be well-placed to suck up to him on behalf of the UK to form a close working relationship with him, but supporters of the plan seem to be rather overlooking the fact that the main job of the ambassador is to represent the UK in Washington, not the USA in London. Assuming that Labour win the UK general election sometime between now and November, it seems highly unlikely that Farage could successfully represent the views of a Labour government, even under a not-so-lite Tory like Starmer. And even less likely that he’d try. Further, since the objective is to deter Farage from standing in the UK election, he’d have to be appointed very soon. That in turn means that, in the meantime, he’d be dealing with the Biden administration. It really is hard to conceive of a better way to p*ss off Biden, and damage UK-US relations, than to appoint a cheerleader for his opponent, an ambassador whose idea of tact and diplomacy invariably involves the use of the biggest megaphone he can lay his hands on.

On the other hand, Sunak seems to have given up trying to avoid upsetting anyone other than the extremists in his own party. Appointing Farage is a suggestion that the Tory high command have apparently rejected, but that’s only what they’re saying this week. Given the extent to which consistency has become an unfamiliar and unwanted virtue in the Tory Party, who  knows what they’ll say next week if Reform’s poll ratings continue to climb? Given the increasing likelihood of some sort of reverse takeover of the Tories by Reform after the election, keeping on the right side of the probable next, or next-but-one, leader might even appeal to the PM, at least until he can escape the nightmare and take up a new and better-paid job in sunny California.

Offering someone a direct bribe not to stand in an election is, of course, illegal under electoral law, but mere legality is, like consistency, another discarded value for what used to be known as the party of Laura Norder. It’s not an insurmountable barrier anyway. All they need to do is to present membership of the Lords as a punishment rather than a reward – and that’s not exactly an unrealistic assessment. Ennobling Farage might even help to prod Labour into reversing its previous U-turn on abolition of the Lords: Farage might yet turn out to have some useful function after all. The thing that still makes it all highly unlikely, however, is that it would require Sunak to make a decision rather than prevaricate. So probably not going to happen unless the desperate supporters of this mad proposal depose him in May.

That Venezuelan trip

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A couple of weeks ago, it emerged that Boris Johnson had undertaken what was described as a ‘private’ trip to see the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. The extent to which this was genuinely an ‘unofficial’ trip seemed to me at the time to be doubtful, given the reports that the Foreign Office had ‘supported and briefed’ the disgraced former PM before the visit, even if it was really true that the Foreign Secretary knew nothing about it until Johnson was already en route to Caracas. It still seems unlikely to me that he would have been briefed and supported without the knowledge of Cameron, and it does seem as if the Foreign Office are less than forthcoming over what advice and support they did or did not give.

Doubts about the idea that Johnson would have paid for the trip himself were entirely well-founded, since it turns out that it was being paid for by the boss of a hedge fund. Classic Boris Johnson. Better yet, it turns out that he was actually being paid by the hedge fund to undertake the trip. Again, classic Boris Johnson. And that it was part of a job which he’s taken on without going through the normal vetting process for former ministers. Classic Boris Johnson squared.

It's easy to understand why the president of Venezuela, the hedgie, and Johnson would like to normalise relations between Venezuela and the West – in the first case because poor relationships are damaging to his country, in the second because poor relationships reduce the opportunities to make money, and in the third because he was being paid to attend the meeting, and he can’t resist the pull of being thought important. It remains a lot less clear why any of those involved thought that a meeting with a disgraced former PM, with no influence over anything, would help to achieve any of those aims except those of Johnson himself. If nobody had given Maduro the impression that Johnson still had some influence, why on earth would he have agreed to meet him?

The Labour Party seem to be concentrating their fire on Johnson’s apparent breach of the rules, but that’s just Johnson being Johnson. He’s never believed that any rules apply to him, so of course he breaks them. And given that he has form on precisely this particular rule, it’s reasonable to conclude that the breach was entirely conscious and deliberate. So what? Another breach of the rules is just business as usual for the man. The bigger question is about what the Foreign Office were up to. Did they really brief and support Johnson for the visit, and do so without informing the Foreign Secretary? Did they really believe that Johnson was a suitable person to carry out a potentially delicate diplomatic task? And put their resources to work in support of a hedge fund’s profit aspirations? Did they really lead Maduro to believe that Johnson was acting in at least a semi-official capacity in order to facilitate the meeting? It seems unlikely that the meeting would have taken place otherwise. Helping to organise and prepare for a meeting whose main aim is to further the accumulation of private profit for a hedge fund that happens to employ an ex-PM seems to me a much bigger scandal than Johnson merely breaking a few rules. Again.

Officially unofficial

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The reports over the weekend that Boris Johnson has been engaging in some ‘unofficial’ diplomacy by meeting the president of Venezuela raise a number of questions. The first, but probably least important, is who paid for the private jet to take him there and back? His spokesperson said that the travel was privately funded and that neither government contributed to the cost. That might be true (although we know from other recent news that the UK government is not averse to funnelling funds through third parties to disguise the source). The one thing of which we can be certain is that Johnson didn’t pay himself. He is a man who has achieved the minor financial miracle of earning ludicrous sums of money for doing very little, getting other people to pay for everything he wants, and still being perpetually broke.

A more significant question is how the meeting came to be arranged. I don’t know whether Johnson and Maduro had ever met before, but they don’t exactly look like the sort of bosom buddies who would pick up the phone and agree to meet for a conversation which ‘sources close to the former PM’ (according to the Sunday Times) described as “one-way traffic”, with Johnson laying down the law to Maduro. So who initiated the meeting between a busy head of state and a disgraced former PM with no role in foreign policy who just happened to be on holiday a mere 1,000km away? Was it Johnson: “Nicolás, old chum. Boris here. I happen to be staying in the Dominican Republic just up the road from you, and I have a private jet at my disposal for the day. Why don’t I nip down to give you a little lecture about democracy and your role in the world?”. And if that sounds unlikely, consider the alternative: “Boris, mi amigo. A little pájaro tells me that you are staying just an hour and a half away from here by plane. Why don’t you blag a private jet from one of your rich friends for the day and nip down to give me a little lecture on democracia?”. I don’t buy either.

And then we’re told that Lord Cameron of Chipping Bollocks didn’t know anything about it until Johnson texted him en route: “Dave, old boy. Boris here. Just flying down to Caracas to give that Maduro chappie an earful about his responsibilities to democracy and the world. Thought that the Foreign Secretary might want to know about it. Toodle-pip!” None of it adds up – it’s far more likely that there was some discussion at a diplomatic level to set up the meeting, implying that both governments are keen for a restoration of some sort of normality in relations. If Maduro really thought that Johnson had absolutely no status with the UK government, why on earth would he ever have agreed to meet him? He can’t have been expecting a friendly fireside chat. In short, this ‘unofficial’ visit looks about as unofficial as a tax demand from HMRC. And if Cameron really didn’t know about it sooner, then someone in his department has been freelancing big time.

But, if it was an official 'unofficial' visit, that brings us to the biggest question of all. Who, in his or her right mind, thought that it would be a good idea to entrust a disgraced former PM, who is also a compulsive liar with a predisposition to saying the first thing that comes into his head, with acting as the conduit for sensitive discussions with a foreign government? The chances of him accurately relaying the UK government’s position to Maduro, and then accurately relaying Maduro’s response to the UK government are not exactly high. He's much more likely to deliver an insult or three in the belief that it’s just banter and good humour. And whether Cameron knew about the visit in advance or not, is it credible that the current PM would not have known that his predecessor but one was being deployed on an ‘unofficial’ diplomatic mission of a certain delicacy? Jobs for failed ex-PMs is becoming a Sunak speciality. Next up? Theresa May as head of an initiative to welcome new citizens? Liz Truss as next head of the Office for Budget Responsibility? If he’s given up on all hope of turning things around, Sunak can at least spend the next few months having a laugh.

Flags, boats and status symbols

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There are some circumstances when doing something unique which no-one has done before can be a stroke of brilliance, but it’s much more commonly the case that there are good reasons why no-one has done it before. Certainly, taking a brief pause between that flash of inspiration and moving forward with the implementation provides an opportunity to at least ask, before committing resources to a project, exactly why no-one else has tried it before. That is generally a sensible question to which there are likely to be some very sensible answers. So when Boris Johnson referred to the proposed replacement for the royal yacht with the words “This new national flagship will be the first vessel of its kind in the world, reflecting the UK’s burgeoning status as a great, independent maritime trading nation”, my first thought was to wonder why it would be the first of its kind (closely followed by wondering how the word ‘burgeoning’ could be realistically applied to the trade of a state busily downgrading its most important trade links).

Although being presented as a replacement for the former royal yacht, it’s actually a government boat, which would only be made available to royals when they’re on government business, and the royals themselves already seem to be trying to distance themselves from Johnson’s latest flight of fantasy. The claim is that the new boat (the price of which has already doubled from £100 million to £200 million since Johnson first started promoting the idea) would be “…used to host trade fairs, ministerial summits and diplomatic talks as the UK seeks to build links and boost exports following Brexit.” Whilst it’s easy to see how it might appeal to those who regret the end of British gunboat diplomacy, it’s harder to see what it actually means in practice. If the UK wants to persuade another country to offer it preferential trading terms, why would it believe that asking that other country’s negotiators to meet on UK territory in the form of a boat in one of their ports is more likely to be successful than actually meeting on that other country’s territory in its seat of government? It sounds like just another expression of that strange English exceptionalism, which assumes that lesser countries (i.e. everybody else) look up to the UK and will be suitably impressed by a big boat with lots of flags on it. Are ministers visiting those other countries really going to spend a week or so sailing there, or are they actually going to send the boat along first and then fly out to join a floating palace which may well be berthed some distance away from the capital (New Delhi, for example, is well over 1000 km from the sea)?

Like most of Johnson’s grand schemes, it looks to have been poorly thought through, and to be more about flying union flags semi-aggressively in the ports of other countries than about twenty-first century trade or diplomacy. It’s a status symbol rather than a practical approach to building links, but any state which needs an expensive status symbol to boost the ego and self-image of its rulers is a state which is already failing.

Mistaken messages

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The UK has a long and far from honourable tradition of ‘gunboat diplomacy’; sending warships to other countries as a visible demonstration of military power and the willingness to use it.  For ‘visible demonstration’ one can also read ‘sending a message’, which was the wording used by UK Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson to describe the despatch of HMS Echo to Ukraine.  The big problem with ‘sending messages’ however is that the message received may not be quite the one intended.  Whilst in theory sending a heavily-armed military vessel to a trouble spot might be intended to tell Putin not to further provoke Ukraine or else the UK might be willing to take action against him, sending a hydrographic survey vessel is more likely to be interpreted as ‘we haven’t actually got a proper military ship available at the moment’.  The effect on Putin is more likely to be laughing his socks off than quaking in his boots.

“…and then he said ‘any more nonsense from you and I’ll order the Royal Navy to undertake a hydrographic survey in the Black Sea’”

Let's just appoint a few flat-earthers

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I’m not sure that the now former UK Ambassador to the EU is as entirely blameless as some have painted him: the route by which his advice to the Government about the length of time it would take to negotiate Brexit (as well as his subsequent resignation e-mail) reached the media has yet to be fully explained.  It’s entirely proper for diplomats to provide their best and most honest advice to governments; it’s rather less normal to make that advice public.

But there is another norm here as well - it has long been accepted (perhaps it’s one of those strange ‘British values’ that they keep telling us about) that senior civil servants are appointed for their ability to represent the government of the day impartially, and not on the basis of their political views.  I’ve noted before that I can see an argument for taking a different approach to the appointment of ambassadors, where an ability to represent accurately and sincerely the views of the government of the day is an important attribute.  If the Brexiteers were to start making that argument in a general sense, then I’d have some sympathy with their viewpoint. 

They’re not doing that, though; they are selecting one particular job and demanding that the person appointed must share their simplistic world view.  I suppose that dealing with matters on a case-by-case basis rather than developing a general policy is standard UK practice, but it doesn’t make for consistency or clarity.  And given the nature of the demands being expressed by some, it doesn’t make for getting the best people into the jobs either. 

John Redwood – ah, there’s a name that brings back memories – argued yesterday (just before the new appointee was named) that the new ambassador should be someone who thinks that Brexit is ‘straightforward’.  Now, there do seem to be a lot of those to choose from, but given the complexities already identified, I wouldn’t want to put anyone with such a simplistic viewpoint anywhere near the negotiations, purely on the pragmatic basis that they’re unlikely to understand most of what’s being discussed.

The Brexiteers’ approach to negotiation seems to be falling increasingly into the traditional British way of dealing with foreigners – speak to them slowly and loudly until they do what we want.  The strange thing, to me, is that they seriously seem to believe that it will work.