Does Wikileaks reveal boasts of irrelevance?

There is much in the American diplomatic cables that is intriguing, amazing and historically fascinating, but a fair amount that isn’t. As you read the latest Wikileaks, aghast at claims by an American diplomat that the Al Jazeera news channel (which fiercely insists on its editorial independence) was allegedly used as a bargaining chip with which to improve diplomatic relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and reeling at the insults hurled at Gordon Brown, the embarrassment of David Cameron and others bear in mind the words of a former key adviser to Gordon Brown and Tony Blair before that. Justin Forsyth claimed in an interview at the weekend that in all his years in Downing Street he, and the men he worked for, in fact very rarely bothered talking to the US Ambassador.

Downing Street, he says, dealt directly with the White House, and so it is unlikely that US Ambassadors would have a very intimate knowledge of how a British Prime Minister thinks and works. This tallies with the assessments of British politics that have been released so far : and how much of it could have been lifted from the newspapers and general discussion in the chattering classes. It might be the same in Paris, where the assessment of Sarkozy also seemed disappointingly shallow.

These days the lines of communication between London and Washington are almost permanently open, between Downing Street and the White House, and between the Foreign Office and the State Department. When David Miliband’s relationship with Hillary Clinton was so close, she would have had little need for her ambassador’s diplomatic cables when it came to key bilateral issues such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

It does make you wonder if the whole point of diplomacy might need some reviewing, for what the real function of outposts abroad should be. Britain already seems to be making the FCO concentrate more on trade in many areas, although this was always a big function anyway. But as that function steps up, the political role might step down in certain countries. There will always be countries where detailed and intricate knowledge of local affairs and customs is vital, where intelligence must be gathered and passed on the old fashioned way. These will be areas where the British politicians perhaps do not invest a huge amount of time and effort, but where they still need to know what’s going on. But in an era where it might now be more secure to have a direct conversation by phone or videolink or in person with Washington, Paris or Delhi, the point of the traditional diplomatic servants might be up for grabs.