Patience and perseverance; the art of diplomacy in repositioning normal

I didn’t know until last week, that there are still two people who are expected to walk backwards when leaving the presence of the Queen. In times gone past, everyone who met the Queen was expected to do this, but Health and Safety regulations kicked in and the backward walk requirement was discreetly dropped. These days, it’s just the Queen’s Equerry and the Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps who still do this. I only know this as I met Her Majesty’s Marshal of the Diplomatic Corps last week. In these days where Covid-19 is still foregrounded in much of what we do, I of course mean I met him on Zoom. There were 284 other folk in the Zoom room, mostly diplomats and ambassadorial staff from over 100 diplomatic missions across the world. It was quite a party, although one had to provide their own canapes and champagne.

Actually, it wasn’t a party at all, but the inaugural World Economic webinar series, which focused on rebooting the world economy. I’m not certain we did. But we made a start and that’s the important thing, and when all is said and done, someone has to do it! It was a fascinating discussion to be a part of. Alistair Harrison is the 28th Marshal, a position originally introduced by King James in 1603. He started the discussion off with an absolutely perfectly balanced account of the old and emergent relationships between diplomacy, politics and economics. In his calm, measured and very reassuring approach, he noted that whilst the economic fundamentals haven’t changed; how politicians responded to the pandemic crisis would shape the economic consequences. He reminded us all of the disastrous response to the 1929 Wall Street Crash, which led to the global great Depression.

He very skillfully (and his use of language was brilliant) took us through some of the consequences of the pandemic, having to rethink supply chains, the need for countries to find ways of working together and not in competition with each other and above all else the necessity of rethinking what, perhaps up to this point, we had always thought of as certainties. He was confident we would find a path through what he describes as the “most challenging crisis facing the world in recent times”. He reminded us that the two greatest virtues good diplomats possessed were patience and perseverance. Both would be needed to successfully negotiate the ‘repositioned normal’. I liked this term much more than the so called ‘new normal’. A repositioned normal speaks to the notion of thinking what should be changed, and what preserved.    

I also liked the two virtues he ascribed to effective diplomats. Patience and perseverance seem to me to be something health and care professionals have in common with diplomats. Helping someone to learn to speak again, or walk once more, or reduce anxiety and restore confidence, all require both patience and perseverance. Likewise, I think it would be very difficult to be a truly compassionate leader without possessing both these attributes. In the current phase of the pandemic, there is another virtue to be seen, and that is resilience. And in order to safeguard our health and care colleagues in the future we have to find ways of ensuring their resilience store is well topped up. Failure to do so now will undoubtedly lead to a great depression of a different kind to that seen in 1929.

Taken action now for a better future was another strand in the discussions last week. The almost irrepressible Inger Anderson was also on the call. She is Danish, an economist and the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme. I have never seen her speak without her having a hugely reassuring and infectious smile. In her contribution she talked about the four entwined crises facing the world at present: health, climate, nature and pollution. It was a passionate plea for change that, like effective diplomacy, will require patience and perseverance in taking forward the actions needed to restore trust and confidence across the globe. Not just economic confidence, but trust in our politicians, in our health and care services, in the science, and in the emergent repositioned normal.

Whilst Black Lives Matter, I would argue, so do Green Industries. The United Nations have estimated that 24 million new jobs could be created through investment in green industries. We have seen, until last week at least, how well Mother Nature can do in healing the harm caused by humankind – over the past few months, our beaches have become once more pristine, our air cleaner and skies free from aircraft vapour trails. And while the young may be keen to get back to the office, older folk in the workforce have realised that a better work life balance can be enjoyed through the adoption of working at home practices. Why would we want to go back to long, unhealthy and often expensive commutes?

I say that, fully aware that for some, particularly women, there can be real challenges when trying to work at home. Some of my children have really struggled with home working, home schooling and general childcare. And as I keep asking J, ‘who is paying for heating, broadband, electricity and so on?’ That said I have also seen what I would describe as a ‘sharing economy’. Volunteers fetching shopping, or making contact with lonely folk. I have read stories of shared PPE supplies, when things were particularly tight, and such an approach has been evident in the way our NHS has responded to the pandemic. In order to reposition our healthcare services in the future, we are all going to have to continue to have patience, embrace new ways of seeking and receiving help and care and finding ways to support each other.

The Rebooting the World Economy discussions reinforced that, in order to rebuild a better future, our mental and physical wellbeing will be key to developing and sustaining a healthy economy and a resilient and supportive environment and likewise vice versa. Whilst we didn’t solve the global economic questions entirely in the meeting, it was certainly a step in the right direction and one which I am certain would have royal approval.