When I first walked through the grand arches of King Charles Street in 2015, the Foreign Office and Whitehall felt a place of stable continuity.

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William Hague had just concluded a four-year tenure as Foreign Secretary - a lifetime by modern standards. But as I look back on my eleven years in the diplomatic service, which I resigned from earlier this year, I count nine different Foreign Secretaries and six Prime Ministers I served under between 2015 and 2026.

Britain increasingly governs in a state of permanent political turbulence, where ministers arrive with fanfare, announce a new set of priorities, and then depart before any meaningful progress can be made.

This seems to be Keir Starmer’s central argument for staying in office, as he battles to save his job. In his big reset speech today, he argued that to stand down would be irresponsible. It is overblown to claim, as Starmer did, that another change of PM would plunge the country into chaos. But the level of churn we’ve seen over recent years is certainly not healthy for any institution or country.

However, there are no good options in our present predicament. One has to ask........

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