Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

Wild life | 8 December 2016

We are devoted to our country but militant politicians are inciting the invasion of our farms

 Kenya

I realised I had fallen from grace when we were dropped from the Queen’s birthday party guest list at the British High Commission in Nairobi. I wondered what offence I had caused to the recently arrived plenipotentiary. I worried that it was because one evening, while jogging in the diplomatic suburb of Muthaiga, I had passed him going at a slack pace and barked, ‘Giddy up!’ I have always been so fond of our British HCs. I picture them to be like Waugh’s ambassador to Azania, Sir Samson, less engrossed with unfolding revolutions outside than with playing with his rubber dinosaur at bath time, which he sat on ‘and let it shoot up suddenly to the surface between his thighs …Chance treats of this kind made or marred the happiness of the Envoy’s day…’ I got on well with the last BHC, who danced like Michael Jackson, and released videos online to prove it. This new chap had run the Africa office for the FCO before coming our way. I wanted him to like me. And I felt sorry for him. How can the Foreign and Commonwealth Office project global power when, after UN subscriptions and the like, it has a global budget of £700 million — one tenth of that of the US state department, a quarter less than France — and only double what Britain lavishes in aid to Ethiopia’s dictatorship annually. The FCO has 12,500 staff, many fewer than Sheffield City Council. Since most are locally engaged, that leaves just 4,300 UK civil servants; fewer than Britain’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (5,630). I’d heard that the new High Commissioner didn’t have much interest in white farmers. Maybe this was why the birthday party invitation had vanished. ‘Look, this is the sort of guy who when he was at school wore verruca socks to the swimming-pool.

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