Imagine greasy lard being tipped gently from an oiled spoon down a wary gullet, massaged through an unwilling gut by soft perfumed hands, expelled as a loose and painless stool from a gently lubricated bum that is then wiped with a balm-infused tissue as the effluvia is flushed noiselessly away. Ladies and gentlemen, thus hath 300 years of British diplomacy attended to the body politic.
Here, we met some of its current tenders, in the opening episode of Michael Waldman’s three-part documentary, Inside the Foreign Office. He was given, we are told, unprecedented access to the misty netherlands through which the civil servants swoop and glide as they watch foreign secretaries and other nabobs come and go, in order to keep other nations in line with nothing but charm, the UN and the annual threat/promise of an invitation to the Queen’s birthday garden party at their disposal.
Sir Simon McDonald is in charge of 14,000 people dedicated to smoothing Britain’s passage through the world. By rights, he should at this point be spending his day locked in a distant store cupboard screaming about Brexit (“I weave filigree webs of influence, lay invisible cloaks of protection about your heads, I take the ineffable, the intangible and translate it into sociopolitical gold for 20 years, you bastards, for this?! For THIS?!”) but, remarkably, he is still functioning. Civil servants are known for the long game, so perhaps he has a secret plan that is keeping him sane. He does say, with a smile: “Diplomacy is the art of letting other people have your way.” He says everything with a smile. Someone should tell him this is the most untrustworthy-looking thing a British person can do.
It is, technically, an exciting time to be an international diplomat. Their mission is smooth sailing, after all, and there are choppy seas everywhere. Trump. Russia in Syria. Russian poisoners in Salisbury. Trump. Ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Trump. We watch the cogs in the mighty machine start to turn to protect people in crisis and to pass resolutions that will enable terrorists to be prosecuted wherever they flee to. Huge things. Amazing things. Things that should make you think: “Cor! It’s just like Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men! I want those 14,000 people on that, here metaphorical, wall! I need them on that, here metaphorical, wall!”
The problem is that this is just not very thrilling to watch. You have to bring an awful lot of previous interest and knowledge to stay with it. An excited diplomat looks and sounds very much the same as an unexcited diplomat. That is very much the job, really. It is the first thing they teach you at diplomat school. Absolute day one. Then, it is six weeks of: “Steady … steady now. Read these books. Look at this globe. Stay calm. Off you go.” And off they go, arranging their faces into expressions of careful neutrality and thinking before they speak, whatever the circumstances that may unfold around them.
There is an exception to every rule, though, and he is appointed during filming, soon after the general election.
Prime minister Herbert Asquith once described the chief characteristic of Balliol men as being “the tranquil consciousness of an effortless superiority”. But that was a long time ago (1908, in fact) and we have all passed a lot of water since then. And Boris Johnson is now the Oxford college’s most public face.
We first see Johnson puffing and blowing through a speech one assumes was meant to inspire his new staff. Then puffing and blowing while some of those staff try to brief him on various delicate matters. Then in a courtyard after a meeting with Sergey Lavrov to discuss Russia’s support of Assad. Johnson, relieved to be back in front of the cameras where he belongs instead of stuck inside with some miserable Russki, makes a joke about “reduction ad UNum” so laboured I thought they were going to have to send an intern out for forceps.
You can almost see the shade of Asquith struggling to take form in order to kick Johnson into touch. He resembles nothing so much as a sealion made of yoghurt, honking desperately to distract everyone from his inability to balance a ball on his nose. What is the Latin, you wonder, for “effortful inferiority”?
The contrast with the sober, watchful people around him, brains buzzing with knowledge, stuffed with facts and all constantly calculating in seven ineffable dimensions in order to get the best possible outcome for Britain or for people in crisis somewhere down the line is … marked.
Still, they have got Jeremy Hunt now and soon, perhaps, if all goes well (for him, and why wouldn’t it?) David Cameron. Let’s hope McDonald has room in that steel box for one or 14,000 more howling souls.
