LONDON — For much of his 30-year career in diplomacy, Edmund Fitton-Brown represented his country in some of the Middle East’s most volatile areas. Now, the former UK ambassador to Yemen believes there is a “loss of clarity” in his country’s Foreign Office about who Britain’s friends and enemies are. He points his finger at Islamist entryism into the country’s civil service and wider society.

Fitton-Brown also says outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s record on Israel, the Middle East, and tackling extremism and antisemitism at home has been “disappointing,” but he is “guardedly optimistic” that his likely successor, Andy Burnham — who has already said he would consider additional sanctions on Israel — will perform better.

Over his decades-long career, Fitton-Brown has held postings in Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. After leaving Yemen in 2017, he joined the United Nations, serving as coordinator of the Security Council team responsible for sanctions and threat assessment on ISIS, al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

In March, Fitton-Brown said in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that parts of Britain’s civil service have “a systematic bias when it comes to the Middle East,” and that Israel is treated with a “forensic level of scrutiny” that few other states receive, while the behavior of its adversaries is frequently “contextualized, rationalized, excused or ignored.”

He says the Foreign Office’s “lack of clarity” about who Britain’s enemies are was symbolized by the fact that, just weeks after the Iranian regime reportedly killed thousands in mass protests in January, staff from the department attended a reception at the Iranian Embassy in London celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Retired from public service and currently a senior fellow at the US-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, Fitton-Brown is a rare voice in the UK diplomatic establishment who has been willing to lift the lid on, and openly criticize, what he terms “a really pronounced drift towards an unconditional pro-Palestinian perspective” in the Foreign Office, itself a reflection of a shift in the wider civil service and public bodies, including law enforcement, academia and schools, and the National Health Service.

Starmer and statehood

Last July, more than 30 former UK ambassadors and 20 former senior British diplomats at the United Nations wrote an open letter to Starmer calling on the government to immediately recognize a Palestinian state.

Fitton-Brown, by contrast, publicly condemned such a step as “misguided,” arguing: “In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, statehood recognition would be at best an empty gesture, at worst a reward for terrorism.”

Despite Labour’s manifesto seeming to rule out Palestinian recognition outside a formal peace process, the UK joined France, Portugal, Canada and........

© The Times of Israel