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The recent scuffle at a Moscow airport between a top UK diplomat and Russian journalists underlines just how far Britain has fallen as a country. Our own ambassadors have become social media clowns

The ugly incident at the airport in Moscow with the British deputy ambassador to Russia grabbing at journalists’ cameras and even ripping a press badge off one should be seen as a message to all of us, when talking about British diplomacy. It’s dead.

Tom Dodd’s embarrassing few minutes, which will surely haunt him for the rest of his career, could not be a more damning example of what diplomacy was once and what it is now. Like international journalism, diplomacy is barely a shadow of its former self and those who work as diplomats are third grade at best, cardboard cut outs for their predecessors 30 years ago who really had clout and affected how the world operated.

The new generation of British diplomats, like Dodd, are not only entirely ineffective and a waste of space and taxpayers’ money but they also come with a number of peculiarities which you wouldn’t normally expect. Narcissism, arrogance and delusion are the new qualities of this breed and it was all there to see in the video clip of Dodd who was absolutely outraged that journalists could actually approach him with questions.

Of course there is quite a great deal of tension between Russia and the UK at the moment as Dodd is now part of a team “inspecting the work of the country’s mission in Moscow in the aftermath of the spy scandal”, reports RT. In mid-September, six British embassy staff were declared persona non grata over their alleged involvement in “subversive activities” and espionage.

Dodd is confused though. He broke the unwritten rules of the foreign office. Typically, ambassadors in Africa and Middle East countries manipulate local media for their own needs and generally treat local journalists like their personal servants. Of course, they avoid international journalists like the plague, especially their own. They basically go native and align themselves with the regime’s own strategy on handling local press.

But this ‘rule’ cannot apply in Moscow where, apart from the press there having more freedoms that your average British hack, the UK is considered practically an enemy of the state. And so Dodd was lost by the ambush situation where his requirements as a ‘new generation’ foreign office twerp didn’t extend to dealing with press with tricky questions. His predecessor of 30 years ago would have revelled in the opportunity to deal with the questions with a certain élan and composure.

Yet it’s narcissism which is the weakest point which shows. It’s this belief that the individual themselves is the most important subject which shames Britain as a once glorious country, now making it look like a failed state which no longer has any relevance on the world stage. Todd belongs to a generation of diplomats who consider journalists more or less as stenographers who dutifully write what you tell them to write, on the occasion, and remain silent for the rest of the period. Like rats in a basket which you occasionally shake to amuse yourself. And yet you can hardly blame him. Britain’s own press is such a shambles these days and so embedded in the government’s annals that you can hardly call it the fourth estate any more. Any foreign correspondent who emails a question to the foreign office media team will tell you that. When a reply comes, it is Sir Humphry gobbledygook language which doesn’t even tackle your question. On many occasions, in my own experience, the FCO plainly lies to journalists. That isn’t what is shocking. The shocking part is how the journalists comply with this draconian system which would have made Stalin glow with pride. The system, which you would normally associate with a regime in West Africa, is supported by the journalists themselves.

And Dodd is part of this system. Corrupt, outdated, backward delusional view about Britain and how it should deal with the press.

But it’s a pattern which I have noticed is quite typical of British ambassadors. While I was in Lebanon, there was a British ambassador there who agreed to an interview with me. When I didn’t do the ‘local’ thing of writing a shining piece on his achievements but instead wrote objectively about him, the same ambassador turned on me. Tom Fletcher, an effeminate narcissist who posed for a photo shoot as James Bond while ambassador and spent most of his time filling social media with photos of himself and super models with swollen upper lips, defamed me to a group of MEPs who visited Beirut, trying to destroy my credibility – as an act of childish petulance for the interview which touched upon his vanity and lack of knowledge of the region.

His wife, a psychotherapist, gave consultation to my then wife, which included demonizing me – to such a point where she threatened to shoot me with her uncle’s.38 pistol.

But Fletcher behaved just like the thugs who ran the country with identical views about ‘local’ journalists who were there to be abused, bullied, manipulated and bribed. He mingled with the gangsters which ran the country, the same people who crashed the economy to profit from the chaos. He was as part of the political elite as you could be. He even had bleached teeth.

It was a similar story in Morocco which I moved to in 2019. The local British ambassador there put himself above everything and literally writhed in his own narcissistic bile, like a pig rolling about in his own excrement. Tom Reilly decided that I would be persona non grata with the embassy and consular staff simply because I had not shown an antiquated absurd level of reverence to one of his staff as though we were living in 19^th century Britain. His love of himself and his own voice led to him finally being fired by the foreign office after rambling on about things which were above his paygrade and making a dog’s breakfast from the Harry and Meghan visit to Morocco in 2019. And yet, what I remember is how far the foreign office went to protect their own under fire. It will be the same with Dodd. He will not receive any kind of punitive treatment. The foreign office is so corrupt that it takes pride in the old boy’s network as kinship and nepotism always take pride of place to merit and performance. The golden rule with British ambassadors is don’t take them seriously. Their own governments don’t, after all.