MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee today had their first chance to put the new foreign secretary through the interrogation mill, but learned little other than that he does not know what the Commonwealth flag looks like.
Flanked by Foreign and Commonwealth Office permanent under secretary Simon McDonald and director general Tim Barrow, Johnson praised his civil servants to the rafters, and insisted they “really see” the opportunities for a post-Brexit UK.
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The foreign secretary also dismissed the suggestion of rivalries between his team, David Davis’ Department for Exiting the European Union and Liam Fox’s new Department for International Trade as “nonsense”.
Johnson used his allocated time for opening comments to praise his staff, and to restate a vision of Brexit as an opportunity for the nation to return to being a genuinely “global Britain”.
“It’s been one of the biggest privileges of my job in the past few months to meet our people who represent the UK to the world,” he said.
“They seem, to my advanced years, amazingly young, idealistic, very often intellectually brilliant – like the two people on either side of me – and I believe they are excited about the challenge of projecting global Britain. They have a confidence, a real confidence and an optimism, that I think comes with the knowledge that they are speaking for a soft-power superpower.”
Johnson also layered praise on his predecessors William – now Lord – Hague and Philip Hammond. Johnson pointed to a growing engagement with the Middle East, which he said owed much to Hague’s reopening of the “language school”.
“We have a Foreign and Commonwealth Office that is more energetic, and outward looking and more engaged with the world than at any time in decades, and that outward-looking spirit is present not just in the Gulf but across the world," he said. "I think it’s going to intensify as we extricate ourselves from the European treaty and forge a new identity.”
Johnson also said that during his three months in post, he had been surprised by how “swiftly” conversations abroad moved on from the implications of Brexit. This was not to be the case for committee members, who showered him with questions on Article 50 and the finer points of his aspirations for the negotiations. None of which received the kind of detailed answers hoped for.
Johnson was emphatic, however, on relations between the FCO and the departments headed by his fellow Brexiteers.
“Of all the fictions in the media, the idea that there are these three competing poles – it’s complete nonsense,” he insisted.
“We’re working together. The FCO holds the network and we’re immensely supportive of the work of DIT and DExEU, and we’ve got to get on with it.”
Possibly in a bid to counter consistent media reports of a civil service resistant to the outcome of June’s EU referendum, Johnson insisted FCO staff were embracing the potential that leaving the EU would afford.
“I’m not saying I want to subtract our commitment to European capitals and our European work, but there are opportunities,” he said.
“I meant what I said about the enthusiasm of the people of the FCO. They really see this and they want to do it and they see an opportunity here.”
Johnson was subjected to questioning about the plight of remaining residents in the Syrian city of Aleppo, as well as relations with Russia. However he was seemingly most challenged by the proposition that FCO buildings may like to start flying the Commonwealth flag in future.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to own up: I’m unaware of the exact configuration of the Commonwealth flag,” the foreign secretary confessed.
Fortunately Simon McDonald was able to sketch a handy guide for his boss.
“That’s a very good drawing; that’s a lovely flag,” Johnson said, before adding: “I’m not going to commit now to flying it everywhere.”
The artwork would be the permanent under secretary’s biggest contribution to the session, as neither he nor Tim Barrow were directly questioned by MPs, or invited to answer by Johnson.
If the nature of the Commonwealth flag provided the lightest note, perhaps the session’s most poignant exchange came early on, when committee chair Crispin Blunt asked Johnson how he expected to achieve the UK’s bold new international role on his current budget.
Wasn’t it, Blunt asked, the case that Johnson’s ambitions were “completely contradicted” by the “utterly dire resources situation” his department found itself in?
“Half of your budget seems to be confined to areas that are ‘ODA-able’,” he said.
“What comfort can you give us that you’re actually going to be able to spend money on reinforcing bilateral relations in Europe in the wake of Brexit and elsewhere?”
Johnson agreed Blunt was “spot on” in pointing to the importance of Official Development Assistance spending.
“Obviously we live in straitened circumstances and we have to make our money go further than ever before,” he said.
“The game now is to make sure that UK ODA DAC-able funds are used in such a way to serve development goals, as they must, but also to ‘mesh and chime’ with our political objectives.”
Blunt pointed out that such spending only applied to countries that received development aid.
“Where our game needs to be raised is with the rest of the world,” he said. “You can’t do this on fresh air.”