One thing the Wikileaks cables reveal, frankly, is the banality of much diplomacy. People tend to think of diplomats as sophisticated insiders privy to secrets and super-attuned to nuance and intrigue. They are the brightest and best and all the rest of it. Doubtless there are some stations and some levels at which this is the case (it’s worth remembering that none of these cables are “Top Secret”). Much of the reporting, however, doesn’t rise much above the level of reading the daily newspapers.
So George Osborne was considered “lightweight and inexperienced”. Who knew? Mervyn King thought Osborne and David Cameron were too interested in politics and insufficiently prepared for the fiscal realities of government? Blimey! There’s nothing wrong with those pre-election observations and nothing in them that you couldn’t have found in the British press.
For that matter and at least in friendly, allied countries this level of diplomatic reporting is neither any better or worse than you’d find from reading the collected cuttings of foreign correspondents stationed in London or Paris or wherever.
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