New UK ambassador to France means women to hold post in both countries
The arrival of Menna Rawlings this summer will be the first time a woman has held the Paris job
26 May 2021
A new British ambassador to France is to take over the role this summer – the first woman ever in the job after 42 male ambassadors.
The appointment of career diplomat Menna Rawlings, 53, (pictured) means there will be female ambassadors on both sides of the Channel – France’s ambassador to the UK since November 2019 is Catherine Colonna, 65, former French ambassador to Italy. Photo: www.gov.uk
It comes as the US is also tipped to appoint a woman to the job of American ambassador to France – Denise Bauer, 57, who leads the ‘Women for Biden’ movement.
Don’t expect transparency from a government run by WhatsApp Iain Overton
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Earlier this month, the Mail on Sunday ran an article that caused quite a stir: there was a hunt on “for a Redthroat mole at the heart of the government”. The columnist Dan Hodges claimed that, after the Cameron-Greensill lobby affair, Labour shadow ministers had received so many leaked texts “it was as if they had been sitting in the Treasury themselves”.
The suspicion in 1999 was that arch-Tories in the ranks of the civil service were deliberately hindering New Labourâs reforms via leaks to journalists. The BBC wanted a film about the early days of the Tony Blair government, and here was an enticing narrative of a battle fought between red Blairites and blue permanent secretaries.
Months of off-the-record interviews with special advisers and civil servants revealed nothing. There were later leaks in relation to the Iraq war, but the picture pre-2001 was more the slow-turning cogs of a bureaucratic institution, not a Sir Humphrey with âteethâ (as Hodges puts it). Blair was certainly reported to have fought against âobstruction and delay by mandarinsâ, but there was no blue fifth columnist.
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