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"Ultimately officers are public servants, but they're also fathers, mothers, wives and husbands and sons and daughters, and the impact on their families has been really heartfelt," he said.

"What I really feel very sorry about is the fact that my husband was a great public servant," she said, adding that he had been the youngest home secretary since Winston Churchill.

Surely this experiment with a fine international servant is over.

There's a need and a big challenge to reverse that and it may need some spending to help the process happen, with perhaps more use of technology to replace civil servants.

The officials' letter signed on 16 May was at least the fourth such document sent by concerned civil servants to ministers and Foreign Office managers since late 2023.