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“... were underestimated.’ A good deal of the blame for this has to be laid at the door of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Chilcot listed four possible consequences that many people had identified before the war was launched: the risk of internal strife in Iraq, active Iranian pursuit of its interests, regional ...”

“... the Russian/Soviet path of a compulsory internal passport, distinct from the passport required for foreign travel, but drivers’ licences and credit records often serve the same functions, and electronic identity cards may not be too far away. The British, while skittish about mandatory ID cards, have the largest number of surveillance cameras per capita of ...”

“... and absolutely uninhabitable. War and famine are, even now, inextricable. Two years ago, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance called for urgent attention to four famines: in north-eastern Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan and Yemen. A fifth candidate, Syria, was excluded only on the technicality that the UN’s standardised food ...”

“... When New Labour took office on 2 May 1997, supporters who had watched the Party’s rush to the right had already learned to put their faith in the God of Small Things. True, they sighed, Blair and the rest had accepted social authoritarianism, ‘flexible’ working practices, rampaging inequality and Conservative taxation and spending programmes ...”

“... of the previous five years, which ‘liberalised’ the economy, making it attractive to both foreign and local investors. The most remarkable fact about India in the last five years is the relative stability it has achieved despite the rapid turnover of governments and political formations. The Hindu nationalist movement, the cause of such dark fears ...”

“... coffee plantation in northern Angola in 1902, he described the situation there in a report to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. He found that contract workers known in Portuguese Angola as serviçais were being brought in from the Congo Free State, sold to plantations, and then forbidden to leave the estates that ...”

“... Uganda’s Asians. As Ian Sanjay Patel argues in We’re Here because You Were There, the 1968 Commonwealth Immigrant Act ‘was the first immigration law specifically designed to target non-white British citizens not resident or born in Britain … Astonishingly, Britain allowed its primary form of nationality to be disconnected from a right of entry into ...”

“... In March 2002 I attended one of the regular Foreign and Commonwealth Office meetings on nuclear non-proliferation. We were told by a senior official that Iraq had reassembled its nuclear scientists and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons programme, which had been completely disbanded by UN inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War ...”

“... military occupation of Kuwait? According to the Arms Control and Disarmament Department of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, these are the only reasons which, in international law, could justify an attack by British forces against an Iraqi facility. But of course the attack was carried out by US, not British ...”

“... of the Irish. As good a place to start as any is 19 December 2001. On this date a dozen men, all foreign nationals, were interned in this country. Recognising the connotations of the term ‘internment’, discredited and abandoned in Northern Ireland, the government insisted this was not equivalent to arbitrary detention without trial, a practice forbidden ...”

“... Sri Lanka’s authorities are in buoyant mood. As Prince Charles prepares to open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo, the Defence Ministry is helping to organise celebrations. But it isn’t the queen they are honouring. The CHOGM is gathering to acknowledge the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, as chairman of the Commonwealth, a position he will occupy for the next two years ...”

“... exports to Iran and Iraq for the duration of the war. The ‘Howe Guidelines’ (after the Foreign Secretary) were as follows: 1. We should maintain our consistent refusal to supply any lethal equipment to either side. 2. Subject to that overriding consideration, we should attempt to fulfil existing contracts and obligations. 3. We should not in future ...”

“... the ethnic separation the Bosnian Serbs wanted all along. Simms is convinced that British foreign policy played a crucial role in the destruction of Bosnia. He has drawn up a brilliant archival reckoning of the Major Administration’s handling of the war, from 1992 to that long-awaited moment at the end of the summer of 1995 when Nato planes finally ...”

“... to modernise using replicas made with imported moulds. Think of Tony Blair abolishing the office of Lord Chancellor by press release in 2003. The Lord Chancellor’s department was immediately reformed and replaced by a Department for Constitutional Affairs, which lasted only until 2007, when it morphed into a Continental-style Ministry of Justice. It ...”

“... States or the Soviet Union, but still perceptibly great. None of them had the percipience of a Foreign Office memorandum which, in 1945, pointed out that Britain could only be treated ‘as an equal’ by her ‘two big partners’ if she made herself the leader of Europe as well as of the Commonwealth; nor the ...”