The strange case of Britain’s outspoken envoy in Uzbekistan, who was threatened with sack and faulted for shortcomings after upsetting Downing St. “Inquiries by the Guardian have discovered that Craig Murray, one of Britain’s youngest ambassadors, was subsequently called back from his Uzbekistan post, threatened with the loss of his job, and accused of a miscellaneous string of diplomatic shortcomings in what his friends say is a wholly unfair way…

‘He was told that the next time he stepped away from the American line, he would lose his post,’ said the source. During a visit earlier this year at the height of the political tensions prior to the Iraq invasion, the former development secretary, Clare Short, is reported to have said to him: ‘I love the job you are doing down here, but you know, don’t you, that if I go, you go.’ She eventually resigned over the Iraq war.” Murray had a depressive episode in the aftermath, requiring treatment with antidepressant medication. Shades of David Kelly?