17th July 2025
Parting is Such Sweet Sorrow
Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office Blogs
A unique insight into UK foreign and development policy
15th July 2025
International Day of Women in Diplomacy: UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls visit to Geneva
1st May 2025
The UN Commission on the Status of Women: My first visit as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls
13th May 2013 Harare, Zimbabwe
Prime Minister of Denmark visits Helmand PRT
The Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt has visited Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team in Lashkar Gah for an update on progress. The visit was the premier’s second since she took office in 2011. The Prime Minister expressed her gratitude and pride of the Danish military and civilian staff in Helmand. She stressed that Denmark will […]
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13th May 2013 London, UK
Europe – the big debate
I was in Dublin last week for Europe Day, where I gave a speech about the future of Europe. There is always a certain frisson when a European audience invites a British minister to speak. The late Baroness Thatcher said once that if you believed everything you read about our views on Europe, it would […]
13th May 2013 Warsaw, Poland
MINIS are GREAT – A Super Family Day Out
Midnight Friday 10th May the Emerging Europe GREAT Mini arrives under the cover of night to Warsaw branded up and raring to go. Saturday 11th May, bright and early, on the road to an airstrip somewhere in the wilds outside Dęblin. A mini Silverstone, well a great little airstrip where 25 of its friends all […]
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12th May 2013 Harare, Zimbabwe
Helmand – will it spiral back into violent extremism?
I’m back from Helmand for a couple of weeks for some R&R, to attend the FCO leadership conference, and to do a ground-truthing session at NATO in Brussels. As always, I’m spending plenty of time persuading friends, colleagues, and anyone who will listen, that: no, it isn’t all going fall to pieces after 2014. Progress […]
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10th May 2013 Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Memorial Day
Our Defence Attaché and I spent Thursday morning laying wreaths at two sites in Tashkent – the Sorrowful Mother monument in Independence Square, and the Volgograd Memorial Cemetery – along with other Ambassadors and military attachés, to mark what in the Soviet Union was known as Victory Day and in Uzbekistan is now the Day […]
10th May 2013 London, UK
Come and work in the FCO Press & Digital team
We’ve just advertised four jobs in the FCO digital team in London. They are: Social Media Manager Digital Communications Manager x 2 Senior Digital Editor If you’re interested in how digital can deliver foreign policy objectives, have a passion for social media, want to develop and design innovative digital campaigns, be part of the team […]
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10th May 2013
This post was published when the author was in a previous role
GREAT on the streets of Istanbul… with more to come
What is GREAT and all over Istanbul? The answer is the GREAT campaign to deepen business and education links between Britain and Turkey. I wrote about the launch of the GREAT campaign last month. That included the goals of doubling trade between the UK and Turkey in both directions by 2015, boosting investment and encouraging […]
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10th May 2013 London, UK
Sajak CSCLeaders / CSCLeaders Poems
In this guest blog, Hajah Aidah shares with us three poems that she wrote for the CSCLeaders conference , where she represented the Sultanate. CSCLeaders is a series of Conferences for exceptional leaders, which assembles individuals from across the Commonwealth to tackle challenges that government, businesses and society face today and builds the relationships needed […]
9th May 2013 Ottawa, Canada
New Faces in the Science and Innovation Network
Now that we’ve finally said goodbye to the last of the winter snow in (most parts) of Canada and hello to warm summer weather, it’s time to welcome a few changes to the Science and Innovation Network (SIN). First of all, a big congratulations to both Nicolina Farella (SIN Officer in Montreal) and to Nicole […]
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9th May 2013 Windhoek, Namibia
HMS Argyll helps boost UK Prosperity Agenda in Namibia
Royal British Navy Frigate HMS Argyll served as a fantastic platform to showcase the best of British commercial interests in Namibia this week in Walvis Bay. The 133m long vessel, complete with Lynx helicopter and 200-strong crew, spent 3 days berthed at the country’s port. I was delighted to join the Governor of Erongo Region, […]
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