Last night on television Gabriel Tate
The all too human face of foreign diplomacy
After two entertaining episodes dominated by the divisive personality of erstwhile Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and the slick epigrams of Sir Simon Mcdonald, Head of the Diplomatic Service, director Michael Waldman wisely moved the focus of Inside the
Foreign Office (BBC Two) onto the everyday support given to British citizens in trouble abroad, exposing both the limitations and the efficacy of soft diplomacy and practical action.
At a time when such efforts are under intense scrutiny thanks to the cases of Matthew Hedges and Nazanin Zaghari-ratcliffe, jailed on trumped-up charges in the UAE and Iran, it served as a useful insight into the complexities of the job. These cases were much simpler: five Brits arrested for “pornographic dancing” in Cambodia, British residents in the Caribbean, beleaguered, homeless or worse in the wake of Hurricanes Irma and Maria; and a 17-year-old orphan facing a forced marriage in Baghdad.
Each played out like a film. The first was a farce that nearly became a tragedy as diplomats painstakingly brokered a deal enabling the Cambodian authorities to save face while still securing the release of the innocent (if imprudent) detainee. The second resembled the aftermath of a disaster movie as a rapid-deployment caseworker rescued a couple from their decimated house.
The third was utterly compelling, a gripping thriller with a human story at its heart. The woman in question was to be killed if she refused to marry her cousin, entailing an extraction operation fraught with tension and danger. Each story offered evidence that diplomats, for all their carefully stated impartiality and remove, are only human. Caseworker Sophie Lott’s personal investment in particular, and her visible, tearful relief when the woman arrived back in the UK, was abundantly clear and understandable.
It has been an enlightening and insightful series by a director who, at first, looked an odd fit. Yet it transpired that documentaries made with Ruby Wax and Stephen Fry, or about Dior and the Royal Opera House, have enabled Waldman to handle both delicate egos and internecine politicking. I wonder what he would make of a Home Office facing the aftermath of the Windrush scandal?
Inside the Foreign Office