I spent several years briefing UK PMs on foreign leaders. So, just to be clear:
Friend. Foe.
00:16
Julia Hartley-Brewer - President Macron, friend or foe?
Liz Truss - "The jury is out" 🤦
Tom Fletcher
21.5K posts
Tom Fletcher
@TFletcher
Personal a/c of @UNReliefChief. Ex Head Hertford College; UK Ambo; No 10. ✍️ Naked Diplomat, 10 Survival Skills For World In Flux, The Ambassador, The Assassin.
- Over several years in @10DowningStreet I collected advice for my son, Charlie: tomfletcher.global/blogs/details/… I asked world leaders what they would say to themselves at 14 years old. Mikhail Gorbachev was quite emotional as he wrote his. His translator helped too. Here it is. RIP
- Don't judge those running for office by the eloquence of their tributes to Ali, but how they would treat a 20 year old version of him now.
- I couldn’t find UK statement, @10DowningStreet, so here’s a quick draft: “We condemn this attempt to subvert the democratic will of the American people, and those in the outgoing administration that has incited it. We call for calm, restraint and a peaceful transition of power.”
- England squad costs 175m. If we exit, let's spend it on the NHS.
- The issue here is not that No 10 sent France a demanding letter and then shared it with the media. That is normal cut and thrust. It is that No 10 wrote a letter for the Daily Mail and shared it with France.France cancels high-level migrant talks in protest at letter published by UK PM Boris Johnson bbc.in/3lak3vU
- I shudder at the thought of the reports that embassies in London are sending their capitals tonight.
- Good to see UK Ambassador in Moscow making a point of doing this. 👇In memory of Alexei Navalny @FCDOGovUK
- In touch with so many friends in Lebanon, Israel, Palestine. A grim and terrifying moment for so many civilians, who did not choose this horror. Somehow, amid the anger and fear, they are telling me there has to be space to recognise the humans on the other side of the fence. 1/7
- As dreams go, this is not up there with Martin Luther King.‘I would love to be having a front page of The Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda. That’s my dream. That’s my obsession’ Home Secretary Suella Braverman
00:00 - A🧵 on first PM calls. I was doing foreign policy in @10DowningStreet last change of government - 2010. Day before he resigned, Gordon Brown leant over to ask me what I was working on. It was brief for David Cameron’s first call with Obama. I stuttered reply. Gordon chuckled.
- Not for the first time in recent years, I shudder to imagine the reports that ambassadors in UK are sending their capitals tonight.
- “All my life I’ve been grateful for contribution France has made … for sense of personal liberty and rights of man which has radiated from soul of France … Show me moment when I swerved from this conception, and you will show me moment when I have been wrong” #TheJuryIsNotOut
