Lessons in Diplomacy, Or Lack Thereof
BOOK REVIEW: LESSONS IN DIPLOMACY: Politics, Power and Parties
By Leigh Turner /Policy Press
Reviewed by: Nick Fishwick
The Reviewer — Nick Fishwick CMG retired after nearly thirty years in the British Foreign Service. His postings included Lagos, Istanbul and Kabul. His responsibilities in London included director of security and, after returning from Afghanistan in 2007, he served as director for counter-terrorism. His final role was as director general for international operations.
REVIEW — It has been a long time since I last read the memoirs of a British diplomat. Some stick in the mind. When Sir Nevile Henderson wrote his “Failure of a Mission” in 1940 he could have been reasonably assured of a worthwhile readership: after all Britain was still a global and imperial power, and the book details Henderson’s failure, as British ambassador to Nazi Germany, to help Britain avoid world war. If the book hadn’t been printed amid war-time paper shortages one would have expected a black and white frontispiece of Sir Nevile in full diplomatic garb, with his morning suit, top hat and medals to offset his superbly waxed moustache.
The cover of Leigh Turner’s memoirs by contrast shows someone who could easily be the lead vocalist of a mid-70s glam rock band, say Kenny or even late period T.Rex, flashing his bare left shoulder at the camera as he sits in the passenger seat of, I’m guessing, a sporty second-hand car. Whatever this is all about, it must be some attempt to distance oneself from the dusty, imperial image of Sir Nevile Henderson. Sir Nevile and British diplomacy in the 1930s were anything but cool, though they mattered. The converse seems to apply to Leigh Turner and modern British diplomacy.
This book does not pretend to be a serious diplomatic memoir. The introduction, and the following 15 chapters in this short book, are all called “How to…” something or other: “how to become an ambassador…how to know people…how to drink wine and know things” etc. Turner has described this work as a “light-hearted handbook”; it was originally entitled “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Diplomacy”, a reference only likely to mean anything to Brits of my and Turner’s generation, and so we wind up with a more portentous and misleading title instead.
Misleading, because the book does not really, with one exception, tell us anything interesting about politics, power or parties unless you mean drinks parties. It is written well (Mr Turner is an established thriller writer) and illustrates a series of points through anecdotes from his diplomatic life. He is too responsible to say anything indiscreet and too nice to say anything nasty about former colleagues and ministers. It is very like listening to an engaging and level-headed coach or mentor, drawing on long experience and conveying a certain wisdom for his client’s benefit. None of Turner’s opinions are anything other than unthreateningly mainstream. He is for diversity, against Brexit, likes soccer and rock music, feels guilty about Britain’s colonial legacy and about living what most would consider a life of privilege. But he does not pretend to have had an unenjoyable or uninteresting life. His insights will work for some readers, as for some coaching clients, and not for others. Here is his advice on what to do when sitting on an aeroplane: “I found it helped to have an idea before boarding of how I planned to spend time on the flight and to try to stick to it, allowing flexibility for better alternatives if they arose”. Thanks! How about world peace? “In most cases, the more urgent question is what can or should we do now to combat or reverse whatever bad things are happening?” Got it. He approvingly quotes the former bass guitarist of the skull-cracking heavy metal band Deep Purple, the type of source missing from Sir Nevile’s book, that “you should never take yourself too seriously”. Right. Some will learn much from this type of insight. Others won’t.
You could be harsh and say that this book is a minor illustration of the ideological bankruptcy of modern British diplomacy, and the strategic irrelevance of its diplomatic service. That would be to take the book too seriously. And every now and then Turner takes a break from showing how nice he is to share some more serious reflections. The short passage “Russia-Ukraine: what next” does not really tell us what will happen next but it is a refreshing focus on some particularly “bad things that are happening.” Turner has served in Russia, knows the place, and gets Putin, for whom “the war is existential”. He reminds us that Russia, in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, pledged perpetual respect for Ukrainian independence in return for giving up its nuclear weapons. As he comments “Russia’s invasions and trashing of the Budapest memorandum put up a country-sized neon billboard to any other state considering abandoning its nuclear arsenal: DON’T GIVE UP YOUR NUKES”. Personally, I would rather have Turner in the media explaining Russia-Ukraine to our people than the usual crowd of self-regarding “former senior British” this or that, all trying to sound important and knowledgeable, consulted by the BBC. I would rather have had more of his insights into power, politics and parties than his know-thyself tips for the almost-leaders of tomorrow. But I hope some readers will have learned more from the book than I did.
Lessons in Diplomacy earns a respectable 2 out of 4 trench coats
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