‘The woke Foreign Office doesn’t stand for Britain’ | Ameer Kotecha

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spiked

Politics, News, Society & Culture, Government

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 10 March 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, UK Foreign Office diplomats were invited to take part in a panel discussion on World Afro Day. As the Iran War broke out, and a British air base in Cyprus came under attack from Hezbollah, the civil-service intranet was urging mandarins to ‘take charge of their development’. Such woke excesses and HR distractions are merely the tip of the iceberg, according to former diplomat Ameer Kotecha. Here, he explains why he quit the Foreign Office, how it fails to put Britain’s national interest first, and how foreign policy is being swayed by sectarian voting blocs. Get tickets for the spiked summit – a brand-new flagship live event bringing spiked’s writers and high-profile friends together for a day of bold debate, live Q&As and on-stage exchanges in Westminster, London. Find out more and book here: https://www.spiked-online.com/event/spiked-summit/ Read spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/ Support spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/support/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What I've dedicated my life to is revenge.
0:04.6	A brand new drama based on the best-selling novel.
0:07.4	They think they're better than us.
0:08.4	Who do you think you are?
0:09.6	I'm going to prove to them that they're wrong.
0:11.4	She's punishing me.
0:12.8	You destroyed my family.
0:14.3	I will not rest until I've destroyed yours.
0:16.9	A woman of substance on Channel 4 starts tonight at 9.
0:20.0	The Foreign Office is too distracted by all of this peripheral nonsense.
0:24.6	Corporate bureaucracy, its woke excesses, and decided to resign.
0:29.6	We're giving away sovereign British territory in the form of the Chegos Islands.
0:35.6	We're not exactly covering ourselves in glory at the moment in the Middle East.
0:39.3	I've also found it incredibly demoralizing and depressing to see how our ministers are being swayed by
0:48.3	sectarian voting blocks back home.
0:51.3	The Foreign Office needs to get back to looking at where the national interest lies and pursuing that and relentlessly doing so.
0:58.0	Hello, I'm Fraser Myers Deputy Editor of Spiked. I'm absolutely thrilled to be joined today by Amir Ketcher, who has,
1:07.0	having worked at the Foreign Office for 11 years, quit last week and wrote a blistering
1:13.3	article about civil services function in the Times.
1:18.1	Amir, as I say, you're at the Foreign Office for 11 years. You were posted as a diplomat in
1:23.4	Russia most recently. But I wondered if you could take people back to 2021 when Kabul is about to
1:31.3	fall to the Taliban. What is on the minds of the senior civil servants at that particular moment?
	...

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