Donald Rumsfeld and the White House sidelined their experienced and able American diplomats – a major factor in the Iraq disaster. Downing Street and ‘sofa government’ turned a deaf ear to what they did not want to hear. Probably what was, in Britain’s case, the best diplomatic service in the world found itself overstretched, under-resourced and uncertain. Do we still need diplomacy? What is its future? And what makes a good diplomat?

To tackle these questions, we have on our panel Sherard Cowper Coles, former British ambassador to Kabul and author of Cables from Kabul: Inside Story of the West’s Afghanistan Campaign, and Sir Ivor Roberts, President of Trinity College, whose long diplomatic career included spells as Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Italy, and the Republic of Ireland. The discussion is chaired by Sir Leslie Fielding, whose own diplomatic career has taken him from Cambodia in the 1960s to Paris, Brussels and Tokyo.