Two of Britain’s most senior civil servants, Sir Oliver Robbins and Nick Dyer, have written a letter to Foreign Office staff encouraging them to resign if they disagree with UK policy on the war in Gaza. This is in response to a letter from department staff that rebuked what it claimed was “Israel’s disregard for international law”.

In one way, Robbins and Dyer are right: if staff do not want to deliver a UK foreign policy in line with the Labour government, then they should take this advice and resign en masse. It has been a long-established, if unstated, principle at the Foreign Office that if staff have objections to the direction of Government policy, then they should quit. In their letter, Robbins and Dyer write: “[T]he bargain at the heart of the British Civil Service is that we sign up to deliver the policies of the government of the day wholeheartedly, within the limits imposed by the law and the Civil Service Code.” Ministers, after all, are elected, and civil servants are not.

Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former deputy legal adviser at the Foreign Office, famously resigned in 2005 because of her belief that UK involvement in Iraq was illegal. Craig Murray, former ambassador to Tashkent, walked in 2003 after raising concerns about Britain turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in Uzbekistan, a country that was a Nato ally in the War on Terror.

In 2013 I chose a posting to Russia with the aim of boosting economic relations between London and Moscow. I ended my FCDO career in 2023 having imposed around half of UK sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. I left out of a concern that UK policy towards the Kremlin was only hurting Kyiv. I also believed the 2020 creation of the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office was botched, and that the organisation was terribly led and incapable of reform. Freed from the constraints of public service, but respecting the Official Secrets Act, I have since written on these topics.

What is different here is that staff have tried to influence the direction of UK foreign policy in a manner free from public scrutiny. When 300 staff wrote to Foreign Secretary David Lammy on 16 May raising concerns about Britain contributing to “the erosion of global norms” by continuing to export arms to Israel and welcoming the country’s Foreign Minister, they were calling for a change in Government action. Staff had also written to express concerns in July 2024 and on two prior occasions following the unconscionable 7 October terrorist murders and kidnappings of Israeli citizens by Hamas.

And yet it was cowardly of Lammy to get his Permanent Secretary to write to staff, rather than holding an all-staff meeting in the Grand Locarno Room. That would have been a better way to allow officials to have their say. The internal mood at the FCDO has been toxic since the Tories slashed Overseas Aid in 2020, and Robbins was naive if he didn’t think someone would leak the letter.

I don’t agree with staff leaking internal documents to the press. But at the same time, the policymaking process should allow for internal challenge and the sharing of all points of view. During his time as Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab never stopped lecturing us on the need to ensure that policy advice was rooted in evidence and analysis.

Cancelling advice that doesn’t fit with what Lammy wants to hear is deeply troubling. By imposing sanctions on Israel’s ultra-nationalist Defence and Finance ministers, the UK has taken a step that some Foreign Office staff will welcome, although some will say it’s still not enough given Labour’s slippery position on the sale of F-35 parts to Benjamin Netanyahu’s country.

The Labour leadership should grant a meeting for Foreign Office staff, and if they still feel they can no longer deliver policy with impartiality then they should take Robbins’s advice and resign en masse. That’s easier said than done when livelihoods are on the line, but it would certainly get the message across.