We civil servants will cut UK aid if we are told to. But when people die, we’ll make sure everyone knows it

UK Aid tents providing shelter for people who have lost their homes to Cyclone Idai in Mozambique, in March 2019. Photograph: Rein Skullerud/WFP/Rein Skullerud

Your humble civil servants are watching with fascinated horror as our terrified prime minister tries to secure the guy ropes for a rapidly shrinking UK tent, in the hope that it can survive geopolitical storms from the east and west.

Spare a thought, then, for the one government department that has repeatedly found itself politically outside that tent and does so again now – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).