I was a senior UK diplomat – why I finally quit ‘woke’ Foreign Office
Ameer Kotecha tells the Express how the Foreign Office lost its way (Image: Getty)I resigned from the Foreign Office last week after serving for more than a decade as a senior British diplomat. It was a privileged career, and I was proud to serve King and country abroad, including as head of the British Consulate in Russia from 2023-25 at the forefront of one of the great challenges to our national security.But for all the Foreign Office’s opportunities and adventure, I eventually – and with a heavy heart – chose to resign. Why? Because I came to the conclusion that the department and the Civil Service more broadly are broken and in need of fundamental reform.At a time when the world is more dangerous than it has been in decades, the Foreign Office carries a heavy responsibility: to guide our country through these choppy waters, to maintain our alliances, to defend our overseas territories, to ensure our friends value us and our enemies fear us.And yet rather than a singular focus on these priorities, the Foreign Office I saw was often hopelessly distracted by corporate bureaucracy, inward navel-gazing and woke excesses.Of course, all large organisations have some bureaucracy. But, at a time when staff are being paid tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer’s money to leave the bloated Foreign Office in voluntary exit schemes – because of the department’s hopeless workforce management over many years – why is the most senior mandarin charged with commercial matters writing to staff about “practical allyship tips for the year ahead”, complete with an accompany toolkit?At a time when we need deep experts on China and on Iran to keep one step ahead of the current conflict, why do we have an entire "Green Cities" team and indeed a "Climate Transitions" department?You do not need to be a climate change denier to question this allocation of resources. The British Government cannot do everything. Should we not be focusing our efforts on tackling the threat from Russia, or rescuing Britons from Dubai, over tackling air pollution in South American cities?The Foreign Office is distracted from its core purpose. It also seems to have lost sight of the national interest. Being beholden to overly rigid interpretations of international law is leading us to give away sovereign British territory, the Chagos Islands, while paying Mauritius billions of pounds for the privilege.Prioritising what international lawyers recommend, over what our national security requires, also explains our dither and delay on Iran. We should have immediately been taking action to robustly defend our military base in Cyprus. Instead, we prevaricated.Even worse, ministers have been quick to trash our deep and longstanding alliance with Israel, in favour of public bashing of that ally for the consumption of Labour backbenchers and Gaza-motivated sectarian voting blocs.Ensure our latest politics headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings Get the latest politics news straight to your phone Join us on WhatsAppOur community members are treated to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. You can check out at any time. Read our Privacy PolicyIt is fine for us to be frank with partners where we disagree with them. But instead of a clear-sighted focus on safeguarding an alliance that keeps Brits safe from terrorism, this Government has risked wrecking it simply to burnish their pro-Palestine credentials.It would not be fair to blame most rank-and-file officials for these problems. Most are conscientious and want to do their best for the UK. But they are being failed by their political masters. And they are operating in a broken system that does not make best use of their talents, and with a culture that incentivises the wrong things.Rather than endless job swapping, modules of e-learning and drafting "country business plans", staff should be encouraged to become proper subject-matter experts, able to provide government ministers with authoritative advice, not simply media summaries. Get More of Our News on GoogleSet Daily Express as a 'Preferred Source' to get quicker access to the news you value. Our foreign policy should be an exercise in looking at the world and weighing up what is in the UK national interest. The job of the Foreign Office is to defend our national security, safeguard our interests and alliances, and promote our prosperity. These things should be the sole determinants of our approach.And yet increasingly they are playing second fiddle. If the Foreign Office is once again to become an institution we can be proud of, it has to get back to its core mission: fighting Britain’s corner abroad.Ameer Kotecha was a senior British diplomat. He was head of the British Consulate in Russia 2023-25 and head of Palestinian Issues at British Embassy Tel Aviv 2025-26 until his resignation
