Few emerge with much credit from Murray’s stinging account. He is amusingly unimpressed by New Labour ministers whom he considers ‘all haircut and presentation’. The Foreign Office he describes is a pettily procedural bully, spineless in the face of American pressure and Uzbek brutality. The way it compiles its case against him, ignoring any evidence that doesn’t fit its premeditated verdict, is unappetising. It is a measure of how the war on terror has perverted diplomacy and thoroughly corrupted our democracies that Washington and London, together with their diplomats and spies, should get into bed with the thugs in Tashkent. Murray was a loose cannon, certainly, but a principled one in the boardroom, if not the bedroom.
Some readers might be a little put off by the ringing endorsement on the jacket. Praise from John Pilger is a dubious gift. Fortunately, the exiled Uzbek opposition leader Mohammed Salih provides more credible positive testimony. As for Jack Straw’s comment that ‘Craig Murray has been a deep embarrassment to the entire Foreign Office’, what — sexual shenanigans aside — could be more persuasive evidence that the former ambassador was a very good thing indeed?
Justin Marozzi is writing a travel history of Herodotus for John Murray.
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