Foreign Office gets to work on Boris Johnson

Foreign secretary Boris Johnson. ‘The bold thinker who, in December, wrote in his Telegraph column that the west should be prepared to work with Assad has now joined the unthinking chorus saying Assad must go as a precondition for peace,’ writes Peter Ford. Photograph: Niklas Halle’n/PA

It has not taken long for the Foreign Office to groom Boris Johnson. The bold thinker who, in December, wrote in his Telegraph column that the west should be prepared to work with Assad has now joined the unthinking chorus saying Assad must go as a precondition for peace (Report, theguardian.com, 19 July). How he thinks removing Assad will not leave a vacuum to be inevitably filled by radical Islamists he does not tell us. Nor are we told how this will help in the fight against Islamic State when Assad’s forces are the only boots on the ground available for this task other than the Kurds in Kurdish areas. This U-turn bodes interestingly for Johnson’s constancy in the matter of Brexit, where the FO will also be grooming him in correct thinking, if indeed he really needs much encouragement.
Peter Ford
Ambassador to Syria 2003-06

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