Last-gasp appointments: should Rishi have waited?

Labour have no cause for complaint if Sunak names a new Washington envoy

I will keep this brief as it requires no great elucidation but makes an important point. Late last month, the prime minister announced the appointment of a new national security adviser, General Gwyn Jenkins. It is the first time the role, created by David Cameron in 2010, has been given to a senior military figure: of the six previous incumbents, five have been career diplomats (though Mark Sedwill, who held the post from 2017 to 2020 and doubled up as cabinet secretary for most of that time, had undertaken big jobs outside the Foreign Office), while the other, Sir Stephen Lovegrove, had come from the private sector to be permanent secretary first at the Department for Energy and Climate Change and then the Ministry of Defence.

My view, which I will expand on elsewhere, is that appointing a senior military officer is a welcome step, partly because it will bring a new perspective, and partly because it demonstrates that the job really is all-Whitehall, not a perquisite for the Diplomatic Service. Jenkins is a Royal Marines officer, currently serving as vice-chief of the Defence Staff, and his CV includes active service in Afghanistan, military assistant to the prime minister, command of 3 Commando Brigade and assistant chief of the Naval Staff, as well as two years as deputy national security adviser (2015-17).

The appointment means that the current national security adviser, Sir Tim Barrow, is moving to another post. It is widely believed—indeed, assumed as fact—that he will become the UK’s next ambassador to the United States, succeeding Dame Karen Pierce when her term ends later this year. She has already served four years in post, her tenure extended when the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the beginning of her stay.

The Labour Party has objected to this, not on a personal basis but because some in the opposition feel Rishi Sunak should not have made an appointment with an election looming, especially one he is widely expected to lose. Instead, they feel, he should have left the choice to the new prime minister, whenever he takes office. A Labour source said:

By needlessly rushing through vital diplomatic appointments so close to both the UK and US elections, the Tories are putting their party interests before the national interest once again… If Labour wins the privilege of forming the next government, we would of course reserve the right to revisit senior diplomatic appointments made in the run-up to the general election.

This is, to be blunt, nonsense. To take one superficial argument, it is not at all clear to me what “party interests” the prime minister is favouring by appointing Barrow ambassador in Washington. Sir Tim is a vastly experienced diplomat who joined the Foreign Office in 1986 and has served as ambassador to Russia, permanent representative to the European Union and second permanent secretary and political director at the FCO. There is no sense in which he is unsuitable or unqualified to be the UK’s envoy to the United States. It would be a coherent accusation of Sunak had looked beyond the Diplomatic Service and appointed, say, Nigel Farage or Boris Johnson. But he has not: he has made a very standard, straightforward, even predictable choice.

There is no fixed constitutional rule or norm or convention that governments cannot make senior civil service appointments in the last months before a general election, or that they should seek the advice, let alone the permission, of the opposition. Sir Peter Ramsbotham was appointed ambassador to Washington in 1974 by Edward Heath’s government just before it fell, and the same administration chose Sir Douglas Wass to be permanent secretary of HM Treasury. The Callaghan government appointed Sir Reginald Hibbert as ambassador to France in 1979, shortly before being defeated at the polls, and Gordon Brown picked Sir Mark Lyall Grant as permanent representative to the United Nations in November 2009, six months before his own electoral defeat. It is simply not a custom to wait.

If the Labour Party means that they wanted to choose the next ambassador to Washington, that is understandable but, I’m afraid, tough luck. Our system of government is marked by a brutally sudden and swift transition of power, which mean one prime minister can still be giving instructions on the Thursday morning of a general election and another can be appointing a new cabinet by Friday afternoon. All the indicators may point to a handsome Labour victory, but, until the votes are counted, it doesn’t matter whether Sunak is on his first or his last day in office.

One former ambassador, speaking to The Financial Times, did allow that “it might have been sensible to clear the decision with the leader of the opposition’s office”. But even he stressed that Barrow was a “technocratic rather than political appointment”, and in no way controversial.

This may, of course, simply be a standard response from Labour, a quotidian, by-the-book election-period attack on anything the government does, and that is no great sin. To exercise power, first you have to win it. Yet it does make me wonder, just for a moment, if Sir Keir Starmer is especially annoyed and frustrated because he planned a controversial appointment himself.

I wrote in February about the history of “irregulars” in senior diplomatic posts, people from outside the Diplomatic Service—mainly politicians— who are appointed to major jobs in exceptional circumstances. Nigel Farage had, of course, touted himself for the Washington post, probably more in hope than in expectation, but the American embassy is one which attracts more outside candidates than most.

Was Starmer planning a surprise gift for our American cousins? David Miliband, the former foreign secretary who has been president of the International Rescue Committee since 2013, was reportedly offered the job in 2010, and would give Labour some weight and Blairite stardust in the embassy. It is also seen as not beneath the dignity of a former prime minister: Gordon Brown has worked closely with Starmer on constitutional reform, and is well regarded Stateside for his leadership during the financial crisis of 2007/08. But then, Starmer is also known to have a good relationship with Sir Tony Blair, but that would be a step too far.

Surely?