That’s another of those irregular verbs, isn’t it? I give confidential press briefings; you leak; he’s being charged under section 2A of the Official Secrets Act.
     (Derek Fowlds playing the part of Bernard Woolley, a civil servant, in the comedy ‘Yes Minister’)
         

In mid-December 2016 the BBC published an article about how the UK’s ambassador to the EU had told the government that a trade deal with the EU might take 10 years to finalise and still fail. So far, so ordinary.

The opening paragraph of the article says:

     A post-Brexit UK-EU trade deal might take 10 years to finalise and still fail, the UK’s top diplomat in Brussels has privately told the government.
         

Wow! You mean this was gathered from private ambassador-level diplomatic correspondence? Did the BBC intercept diplomatic communications? If so they’re far more technically advanced than I thought…

Oh, hold on a sec:

     In October, Sir Ivan, who conducted David Cameron’s negotiation over the UK’s relationship with the EU, advised ministers that the view of the 27 other countries was that a free trade agreement could take as long as a decade.
         

Hmm, I wonder what the reason for the delay in publishing could be - there’s at least a month and a half between October and mid-December. Perhaps they’re rather slow writers? I know, they were being good journos and checking their source… nah, it can’t be that either - if they intercepted the comms themselves then they know the source. Perhaps they were checking with their lawyers that a ‘public interest’ defence could keep them out of jail?

Oh silly me! Of course! Someone else gave it to them in mid-December! That could explain the delay.

     (Don’t worry, of course we’ll protect your anonymity. A good journo never reveals his sources).
         

Anyway, what’s the story here? Oh yes, 10 years to strike a trade deal which might not work, right? Well who’d have thought that? If you’re anti-EU you probably think that’s a perfect example of the bureaucracy of the EU. If you’re pro-EU that’s just them being thorough isn’t it?

Actually, that does not matter either way - if you read the article it states that the ambassador advised that …the view of the 27 other countries was… Not that this was necessarily his view but only reporting that this was the view of the other EU member states. A bit depressing, but not too surprising.

A few weeks later our ambassador resigned. The BBC plays up the view that the government has got rid of someone who was not quite ‘on side’ apparently ignoring the fact that a government spokesman stated that:

     Sir Ivan Rogers has resigned a few months early as UK permanent representative to the European Union. Sir Ivan has taken this decision now to enable a successor to be appointed before the UK invokes Article 50 by the end of March. We are grateful for his work and commitment over the last three years
         

and that Sir Ivan stated much the same in his farewell e-mail letter to his staff:

     As we look ahead to the likely timetable for the next few years, and with the invocation of Article 50 coming up shortly, it is obvious that it will be best if the top team in situ at the time that Article 50 is invoked remains there till the end of the process and can also see through the negotiations for any new deal between the UK and the EU27. It would obviously make no sense for my role to change hands later this year. I have therefore decided to step down now, having done everything that I could in the last six months to contribute my experience, expertise and address book to get the new team at political and official level under way. This will permit a new appointee to be in place by the time Article 50 is invoked.
         

Do I believe these people (the government spokesman and Sir Ivan)? Yeah, at least a bit. There are rarely clear-cut single reasons for life changing decisions but it’s perfectly plausible that this was one of his reasons. I think they’re probably more reliable than someone who leaks a private diplomatic communication.

So what about Sir Ivan’s farewell e-mail? Explosive stuff, surely? Well no, not really. Much is made of his comment that

     I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.
         

He’s clearly talking about UK government ministers here surely? Again, no - or at least not only UK government ministers. In my experience if a ‘blame culture’ develops in an organisation the tendency is for junior members of staff to try to ‘keep their heads down’ and make sure that they can’t be blamed for anything that goes wrong. This completely stifles talent and makes the organisation much weaker. I think Sir Ivan is trying to make sure that the team he’s handing over to his successor will continue to avoid this pitfall - he’s praising them for not having a blame culture.

Speak Truth to Power: A Quaker Search for an Alternative to Violence. Is the title of a book published in 1955. Note the subtitle, it’s important. It has strong echoes (or vice-versa) of Sir Winston Churchill’s To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war. Diplomats have always sought to avoid conflict between the groups they and their peers represent.

So again, what’s the story here? The real story is that someone leaked ambassador-level diplomatic correspondence to the BBC and that they decided to publish a story on the back of it. The BBC no doubt took the view that publishing the original article was ‘in the public interest’… In what way did the public benefit from knowing that our ambassadors give advice to the government or that not everyone in government likes what they hear? What, you think that’s unusual?

You know what would definitely be in the public interest? Knowing who gave the correspondence to the BBC. That would give us valuable insight about who we should trust.