Ex-top civil servant Sir Simon McDonald says Boris Johnson was worst PM he worked under

Published

3 years ago

November 10, 2022

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The former head of the diplomatic service has said Boris Johnson was the worst prime minister he worked under.

Sir Simon McDonald served under seven prime ministers, from Margaret Thatcher to Mr Johnson, as a diplomat and, from 2015 to 2021, as permanent under-secretary to the Foreign Office and head of the diplomatic service.

A civil servant for nearly four decades, Sir Simon has had a unique insight into the workings of government and after resigning last year is now a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords.

He spoke to the Beth Rigby Interviews… programme about the PMs he worked with and the importance of staying neutral as a civil servant.

Sir Simon, whose book Leadership: Lessons from a Life in Diplomacy is published next week, worked closely with Mrs Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Mr Johnson.

“Thatcher was the best and Johnson was the worst,” he said.

And if he had to include Liz Truss, then “she was a worse prime minister than Boris Johnson” while Rishi Sunak is “methodical and promising”.

Johnson was ‘charismatic but chaotic’

Sir Simon, who is now the master of Christ’s College, Cambridge, said Mr Johnson, on a personal level, was “always charming to deal with, he was humorous, he was kind, he was the foreign secretary I worked with who had the most time for the people in his office”.

“And this is a real mark of a character. But what you need to be an effective prime minister is different. Being prime minister is one of the toughest jobs in the world,” he said.

“He is charismatic but chaotic.

“He liked to have multiple opinions swirling around him, the people proposing those ideas never really knew whose was in the lead – sometimes the decision wasn’t clear and sometimes the decision was reversed.

“There was too much swirl, and in the end, the system responds to clearer directions.

“One of the most disconcerting things was to see him arrive at a meeting, pretending to be less well briefed than he actually was. But that was part of his character.”

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The downfall of Boris Johnson

In July this year, Sir Simon took the unusual decision, for a former civil servant, to tweet out a letter to the standards commissioner saying Number 10 “are still not telling the truth” about Mr Johnson not knowing about previous sexual assault allegations against Conservative MP Chris Pincher.

Asked if Mr Johnson was told about the allegations against Mr Pincher, the subsequent investigation and the outcome, Sir Simon said he was informed when he was foreign secretary and again when he was prime minister.

Sir Simon’s tweet put Mr Johnson’s premiership in peril, with the row over Mr Pincher leading to the former PM’s exit from office.

He said he did not think his letter would have such an impact and admitted the backlash from the government was “unpleasant” but not as bad as what the victims of Mr Pincher had experienced.

“I spoke for a couple of reasons. First of all, I’d left the civil service and am now a member of the House of Lords. I am part of the legislature, so I have additional duties,” he said.

“Second, as the story developed, it seemed that nobody was paying attention to the previous victims. And there were victims.

“And I thought they should not be airbrushed, but what they had endured should be remembered.

“I’d written the letter on Monday evening, my wife made me sleep on it and as we were going to sleep I said ‘do you think anybody will notice?'”

Mr Pincher, a former deputy chief whip, denies all allegations of sexual misconduct.

‘My letter was the final straw’

A former minister then told a newspaper Sir Simon and Mr Johnson “never saw eye to eye” as the civil servant was a Remainer, implying he had an ulterior motive.

“It was unpleasant but much less unpleasant than what the victims of the various Pincher scandals had undergone. And it was wrong. I knew it was wrong,” Sir Simon said.

He added that Mr Johnson knew he was a Remainer but denied pushing those views as he strongly believed his job was “to make the best of the exit, that is what civil servants do, no matter the government, even when they disagree”.

Despite initially questioning whether his letter would have any impact, Sir Simon added: “I accept that mine was the final straw that made it onto the Johnson camel’s back first.”

When Sir Simon stepped down as head of the diplomatic service early, there was speculation it was because he was against the merger of the Foreign Office with the Department for International Development.

But he denied that was the case, saying: “I supported the merger very, very strongly.”

Thatcher to Johnson

Sir Simon said all the PMs he has served under were “good at some things and weak at other things” – and “nearly all look better in the rear view mirror”.

“Margaret Thatcher was a very difficult prickly character for the system, but who had a clarity and a sense of purpose and a sense of galvanising the system which looks to have been one of our most effective prime ministers in 300 years,” he said.

He said John Major looked “beleaguered at the time” but “was one of the most methodical men I’ve ever seen”.

Tony Blair was “the best at communicating but some of his biggest policy calls were just wrong,” he said.

He said he does not think Mr Blair lied when he said there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but “the intelligence picture comprehensively misled him” and he “believed what he was saying”.

“It’s very, very difficult as a human being to admit wrong decisions,” Sir Simon added about Mr Blair not admitting he was wrong.

He said Gordon Brown was “the best of finance but quite a difficult communicator” who “wore his anxieties on his face” which was not helpful when leading people “through very difficult time”.

David Cameron, Sir Simon said, “looked the most of ease in the job and was in some ways the easiest to work for”.

Theresa May was also a “methodical person but with a very difficult job that she didn’t really sympathise with”.

World

Renewable energy produces more electricity than coal for the first time, experts say

Published

2 hours ago

October 7, 2025

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Renewable energy produces more electricity than coal for the first time, experts say

For the first time in history, renewable energy has produced more of the world’s electricity than coal, according to a new analysis of global energy trends.

In the first half of 2025, solar and wind energy outstripped growth in global electricity demand and led to a small but significant reduction in the use of fossil fuels compared to the year before, clean energy analysts Ember said.

The finding coincides with the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasting a doubling of global clean energy capacity by 2030.

“We are seeing the first signs of a crucial turning point,” said Ember’s electricity analyst, Malgorzata Wiatros-Motyka.

Deployment of renewable generation, particularly in developing economies, has outpaced new fossil fuel power in recent years.

‘The beginning of a shift’

But many experts warned the increase would not be enough to meet rising global demand for electricity, let alone start to reduce emissions and therefore combat global warming.

Ms Watros-Motyka said: “Solar and wind are now growing fast enough to not only meet the world’s growing appetite for electricity – this marks the beginning of a shift where clean power is keeping pace with demand growth.”

The IEA analysis of renewable energy trends predicts global renewable generation will increase by 4,600 gigawatts by 2030 – a growth equivalent, it says, to the current total power generation of China, the EU, and Japan combined.

IEA executive director Fatih Birol said solar photovoltaic, or solar PV (the technology that converts sunlight into electricity using solar panels made up of photovoltaic cells), “is on course to account for some 80% of the increase in the world’s renewable capacity over the next five years”.

“In addition to growth in established markets, solar is set to surge in economies such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and several Southeast Asian countries,” he added.

The trend is not even, however.

Ember’s analysis found renewable generation outstripped coal in both China and India in the first half of 2025, but in the US and Europe, the reverse was true.

Rocketing electricity demand in the US, driven in large part by electricity for AI and datacentres, saw more reliance on coal and gas generation, despite an increase in renewable electricity capacity.

In the EU, lower output from wind farms and hydroelectric plants led to a higher reliance on fossil fuels.

The reports highlight the challenges of switching economies from fossil fuel-powered electricity grids to those dominated by renewables.

They also don’t rule out future shifts in fossil fuel emissions if demand accelerates or supply chains for renewables are constrained in some countries.

The growth of offshore wind for example, is now forecast to slow due to policy changes in places like the US and materials costs in Europe, according to the IEA.

However, the growth in green power also reflects potential opportunities missed by countries like the US, and right-wing politicians in Europe, who reject renewable electricity on ideological or cost grounds.

In nearly all markets, the agency concludes, solar panels are the cheapest and easiest-to-install form of generation.

US President Donald Trump, who recently told the United Nations climate change was the “greatest con job”, might want to study the numbers, too.

His administration has committed to increasing US oil and gas exports and abandoning support for renewable energy.

According to a separate analysis by Ember, the US sold around $80bn (£59bn) in oil and gas in July, while China exported $120bn (£89bn)-worth of green technology in the same month.

World

Netanyahu is learning limits of what can be achieved by military power alone

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2 hours ago

October 7, 2025

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Netanyahu is learning limits of what can be achieved by military power alone

It is hard to remember the Middle East before October 7 2023, so much has changed in the wake of its horrendous events.

Before the attack, the region’s geopolitical tectonic plates were grinding, but an uneasy status quo held sway and observed certain rules.

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But that day unleashed an earthquake, changing everything.

In two years of turmoil since, the region’s rulebook has been torn to pieces.

The first rule: Israel would manage the threat from Hamas but not try to eradicate it. Israel’s policy of dividing and ruling the Palestinians’ rival factions had come back to bite them.

Instead, Israelis insisted in one voice after October 7 no more “mowing the grass”, their euphemism for cutting Hamas down to size, from time to time. This time, the job must be finished.

That would change the way Israelis waged their war in Gaza. Not least in the way they would tolerate many more civilians dying, in the name of defeating their enemy. If the target’s rank was high enough, the deaths of scores of civilians – women and children – would be acceptable.

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The outcome has been an unprecedentedly high civilian death toll.

Israel’s war on Hamas has now killed more than 67,000 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians or combatants.

Its impact will be felt for generations to come, not least no doubt on the potential radicalisation of those who have survived.

And it has seen Israel, a nation conceived in the wake of one genocide, accused of perpetrating another. That stain, justified or not, has implications for Israel’s psyche and own sense of identity.

Israel denies all accusations of genocide. But it has potentially grave repercussions for its future.

Abroad, popular support for Israel has fallen most of all among the young and most of all where it needs it most: America. The rule that supporting Israel will always be a vote-winner in the US is also now in question.

But the rules have changed Israel’s borders and in the way it has chosen to wield its increasingly hegemonic military power even more dramatically.

Israel’s leaders found a new boldness in the wake of October 7, at the same time as technological and tactical advances gave them the tools to pursue it.

The pager operation against Hezbollah that crippled the Shiite Lebanese militia was planned long before October 7. But it reached operational utility just as Israel found the risk appetite to implement it.

It was decisive in the events that led to the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Since 2006 and Israel’s last war with Hezbollah, the rule held that neither would risk provoking another. It would be too devastating for both.

The pager attack disabled Hezbollah’s ability to launch tens of thousands of missiles, after months of attritive attacks on them by Israel.

For as long as Hezbollah held that arsenal of missiles, it was assumed Israel would not risk attacking Iran. With that neutralised, Israel could now take on its ultimate enemies there.

The rules were rewritten in the skies over Iran and Israel in their first direct attacks on each other in April and October last year. Then, in June this year, Israel unleashed a devastating 12-day war on Iran, joined in its closing stages by US warplanes too.

But after reaching that zenith in military supremacy, Israel has since overreached. A failed airstrike on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, provoked the anger of allies, most crucially Donald Trump.

In the prelude to this anniversary, Benjamin Netanyahu is learning the limits of what can be achieved by military power alone. Having invested more in military action than constructive diplomacy, Netanyahu’s Israel is now increasingly isolated.

Israel’s leader finds himself hemmed in by a US president being leant on by Arab allies. Trump will not tolerate Israel annexing the West Bank and wants a deal that offers a “credible pathway” to a future Palestinian state.

Netanyahu needs to show he can still bring the remaining hostages home, that fighting the war this long was justified, and he has a plan for what happens the day after.

And if the war is being drawn to a close, with American mediation and the support of Arab partners and allies, they all have responsibilities too.

To find a better new status quo with far better rules, to make sure the carnage and regionwide turmoil of the last two years can be brought to a close and never repeated.

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October 7: Two lives torn apart by day that changed everything

Published

2 hours ago

October 7, 2025

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October 7: Two lives torn apart by day that changed everything

For a long time, Rita Lifshitz would come back to Kibbutz Nir Oz every week, sit outside the house of her father-in-law, Oded, and have a drink.

To raise a glass to the people who had gone. To remember October 7.

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“We used to drink a beer every weekend,” she tells me, her eyes trained on the small little table on the patio where they would sit and talk.

“So for 500 days I came to have a beer outside the table. Here I put the beer for grandpa and I put the beer for me. He was my psychologist for 500 days.

“He was only a few kilometres from me and I just imagine him coming in with a big smile.”

Around her, the charred remains of violence, death, and devastation. The burnt-out wreckage of happy lives that came to a horrific end.

I spent two hours walking around this kibbutz with Rita. She showed me the places where friends had been murdered, where loved ones had been taken hostage, and where her best friend had been shot and then dragged away, his blood still smeared over the floor of his home.

“It is a trauma,” she says. “And all of us, the whole kibbutz, wakes up every morning to the 7th of October.”

On the morning of 7 October 2023, this small kibbutz, which sits within sight of the border with Gaza, was overrun by Hamas fighters.

In total, 117 people, more than a quarter of those who were there that morning, were either killed or kidnapped. No other kibbutz suffered such a high proportion of casualties.

Among them, Oded Lifshitz and his wife, Yocheved. Both were in their 80s, and both had volunteered for charities promoting peaceful relations with Gazans. Both were taken hostage on October 7.

Oded used to drive sick children from Gaza and take them to Israeli hospitals for treatment. Now we stand in the charred remains of their home.

Yocheved was eventually released after 16 days as a hostage, but Oded died in captivity. His body was not returned until earlier this year, but he had probably died a year earlier.

And now we stand in the charred remains of their house.

To Rita, this place is both a touchstone to a happier time and also a stark warning of inhumanity. A panel of metal is all that is left of the piano that Oded loved to play.

The couple’s crockery is still scattered in a corner, thrown there when their furniture was upended.

“They started firing rockets at us at 6.30 in the morning, but we didn’t worry because they have been firing rockets at us for 20 years,” says Rita.

“There was one day we had 800 rockets land round here, so we are not scared of rockets. We didn’t get any information about what was happening, no warning.

“The first we knew was when two people working in the fields saw Hamas, and they were the first ones to be killed.”

It is believed that around 540 fighters attacked the kibbutz – far more than Nir Oz’s entire population. It was a massacre. Only six houses escaped attack.

The nursery school workshops, gardens – all of them shot, burnt, destroyed.

We move to the far end of the home, picking our way through the debris that still litters the floor.

There is a steel door, the entrance to the bomb shelter where Oded and Yocheved often slept and where they tried to hide.

Their beds are still here, blackened and burnt. In the door are bullet holes – Oded had done his best to hold the door shut, but he was shot in the hand and the attackers stormed in.

‘The death road’

The last time Yocheved saw her husband was him lying on the floor, bleeding. As she was taken away, rolled into a carpet, she didn’t know if he was dead or alive.

To walk around this kibbutz is to witness the scars of trauma again and again. A black flag outside a house means someone died there.

A yellow flag designates that an occupant was taken hostage. There is a road that Rita calls “the death road,” where almost every house has at least one flag outside.

Read more about the war in Gaza:
Trump’s Gaza peace plan explained
Sky News reports from inside Gaza City

We go into the home of one friend, who was murdered in the living room. Her clothes are still there, her handbag hangs on the bedroom door. It feels so intrusive to be here, but Rita insists the world needs to see.

We see Natan, a long-term resident who is now 88 years old. His home was one of only six to escape being ransacked, because the Hamas attackers couldn’t work out how to get through the front door.

He says he came back as soon as he could, despite the destruction around him, insistent he is not fearful.

“This is my home,” he says emphatically.

Rita takes me to the home of her best friend, Itzhak Elgarat. Unlike most of the homes, his was not set ablaze, so it still looks now as it did then.

A bottle of olive oil is on the side, cooking ingredients laid out, a couple of bottles of wine set on the table.

But also bullet holes strewn across the walls, in the furniture. Possessions thrown around and, horrendously, Itzhak’s blood still smeared across the walls, the floor, and the door where he was shot.

The other side

I climb a set of stairs, which used to belong to a house that has now been demolished.

You can see Gaza in the near distance, across a few fields.

And over there, not so long ago, Sabah might have been looking back.

Just as Rita’s life has been torn apart by the war, so has Sabah’s. For Rita, it is the mental torment of what happened on October 7, the struggle to process and to move on.

For Sabah, it is something more fundamental. A Gazan displaced from Khan Younis, she once lived in a grand home near the border, only a couple of miles from Kibbutz Nir Oz, as the crow flies.

It was a home for multiple generations, the pride of her life, “a place meant to give us stability and peace”.

Since then, she has been displaced 13 times, and she worries that her home has been reduced to rubble.

“Personally, I long to go back to even the ruins of my house, to sit among the rubble, simply to be there,” she says.

“Even that would be better than this life. At least then I might find a little peace.”

The last time she saw her home, it had been hit by an explosion. Some of it was destroyed, but other parts were habitable.

But since then, Sabah has been told that it has been damaged by both fire and military action – news that devastated her.

She says: “Someone told me ‘your house was the very first thing they burned. The fire raged inside for three days. And after they burned it, they brought in an armoured vehicle and blew it up’.

“Just imagine losing your home. When they told me what happened to mine, I spent nearly ten days doing nothing but crying.

“It feels like your soul is torn away. Your spirit leaves you.”

She insists that this story is not just about October 7, not just about Hamas, but about decades of struggle that led to this point, about Palestinian anger and accusations that they are oppressed by Israel.

“This goes back generations. What happened on October 7 was not the beginning of the story. I remember my father, my grandfather, and their fathers before them telling what they had endured. We have lived our entire lives under this weight.

“This land is ours, our homeland. We did not buy it. It has been passed down from our ancestors, generation to generation. That is why it is not easy for me, or for any of us, to surrender it.

“The truth is that we are exhausted. We are an oppressed people. October 7 was just one day, but for us, it has felt like living through hundreds of October 7th’s, over and over again.”