\u2022 Ameer Kotecha: Foreign Office fails to put Britain first. That\u2019s why I\u2019ve quit<\/a><\/p>\n Kotecha, who joined the department in 2014 and has held posts in Russia, New York and Hong Kong, said: \u201cRather than a really clear-sighted, level-headed assessment of what\u2019s in the national interest and what\u2019s good for the UK, we\u2019re instead having our entire foreign policy dictated by what the lawyers tell us international law requires.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve taken my duty of civil service impartiality seriously, but the frustrations have got too much and frankly I think the system is broken. I\u2019m ashamed to serve this government, so I\u2019ve decided to throw the towel in.\u201d <\/p>\n Kotecha claimed that civil servants were regularly distracted from their duties by Foreign Office<\/a> initiatives and that ineffective civil servants were regularly promoted. He claimed that some diplomats worked from home because they did not want to work in a \u201ccolonial\u201d office building.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s this constant focus on the peripheral and the cuddly rather than a really relentless focus on the core of what the Foreign Office is meant to be there to do, and I think that\u2019s something that afflicts all government departments in their own different ways,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Some civil servants in the Foreign Office worked from home rather than attend a \u201ccolonial\u201d building<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\/6211a033-6a4a-4bd1-9267-c84357b1d65a.jpg\")
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