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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Foreign Office is ‘elitist and rooted in the past’, says new report

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Whitehall, London. The report suggests modernising the premises.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Whitehall, London. The report suggests modernising the premises. Photograph: Galit Seligmann/Alamy

A powerful new international department would help Britain adapt to being a middle-rank power and shed a Foreign Office identity that is “somewhat elitist and rooted in the past”, says a damning report by some of the UK’s leading diplomats.

The report, clearly directed at an incoming mission-based Labour government, has been written by the former cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill, the former No 10 foreign policy adviser Tom Fletcher and the former Foreign Office director general Moazzam Malik, among others.

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