What do the diplomats DO?

Not so worried about what they will do now, as what they were doing in the first place, as trisher says.

Spy trisher .

I imagine the Foreign Office will either find new postings abroad for them, or find desk jobs in the UK for them.
Presumably if these solutions are not possible they are paid unemployment benefit like the rest of us if we are out of work.

Most diplomats are hard working civil servants and the various embassies may be able to continue working without them, but the staff left "en poste" will have to run faster to keep up with the work load.

I imagine that it will all blow over eventually and they'll be back in post...

Diplomats do it diplomatically I suppose.

Gather intelligence?

OldMeg Is that the same as spying?

trisher ?

I just wonder if they are all having a nice holiday on full pay?

Almost 500 years diplomat Sir Henry Wotton allegedly punned 'An honest man who is sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.'

Apparently in the original Latin which Wotton translated there was no pun. 'Telling untruths for the good of his country' was definitely intended.

It must involve driving! in the UK foreign diplomats run up astronomical parking fines from which they have immunity. Other than zipping in and out of congestion zones and parking illegally, once they get out of the car, one can only guess, the title "diplomat" has a suitably vague built in gravitas about it but who knows what any of them do, wouldn't most of them be embassy staff? The expulsion news conjures up armies of them worldwide. As for the returning ones, I guess they are dispatched somewhere else to gather a quid pro quo quota of unpaid parking fines on behalf of the UK.

Depends what sort of job they had - they may
- gather information about political or other developments and how these affect their country
- promote their countries interests in a variety of of areas
- deal with visa applications and assess eligibility for different categories of visitors wishing to go to their country e.g. tourist, work, spouse visas etc
- deal with problems relating to their citizens in the country of posting e.g. if their citizens are arrested, in hospital, involved in some sort of natural/terrorist incident or are victims of crimes

So what do they do when they are sent home Cold?
Eirel

What I dont understand is that x-amount if “spies” were sent back to Russia.

So why did we tolerate them in the first place?

What on earth were they spying on?

All a load of tripe it seems to me

Well there's their 'spies' and our 'spies'. It seems to be quite a growth industry. Maybe we should all be advising our GCs to consider it as a future career.