Nick Archer

Why I’m moving on.. and the two "Tonio’s"

The front page of our website carried the news that I’ll be moving on from Malta in August. This blog will inevitably become something of a chronicle of departure.  I hope that that in itself may be of interest to those who have never bothered – why should you? – to think about how, when and why Ambassadors or High Commissioners come and go.

The question I’ve been asked most over the last week – after Where are you going?, which I cannot answer yet because there are strict rules about whom you tell first and second and so on – is Why so soon?  It is early; I might have stayed until March of 2010, but these days, tour lengths are maxima and when you go depends more on when the right next job for you comes up.  In my predecessor’s case, a little more than three years in; in mine, about two and a half.  If a job looks like it might have your name on it, you grab it.

This is not how most people imagine our lives are regulated; there’s still a strong sense that you ‘are posted’ – that the experience is essentially passive.  But the British Foreign Service has made it more active: you watch; you bid; you interview; and you may get what you and your employers think is a good fit.  As long as there’s a framework to guard against absurdities – a move a year, or staying put forever – this must be a better way, mustn’t it?

Meanwhile The Times of Malta yesterday quoted the Foreign Minister, Tonio Borg, as saying ‘Malta must recognise Kosovo’.  Yes.

I went to see the other Tonio yesterday – Tonio Fenech, the Finance Minister – to offer his Ministry a Chevening fellowship.  These are the successors to the scholarships we used to offer here, but which we phased out once Maltese students got easier access to British universities as EU citizens.   At the beginning of this year, Martha Delicata from Justice and Home Affairs went on a fellowship in England to look at Managing Migration.  She was a great success.  This coming January’s is on the European Political Economy.  We won Malta the right to apply because there’s still an understanding back home of the challenge of building capacity – notably civil service capacity – here to our mutual benefit.  But it’s only the right to bid; as with attempts to secure Ambassadorial appointments, you then have to succeed in the selection process.  So I wanted the Minister personally to help identify of a really strong candidate.  He will. 

Posted at 11:08 15 July 2008 by Nick Archer  |