Peter Ford

Peter William Ford (born 27 June 1947)

Having finished his Arabic studies he worked for the Diplomatic Service in Beirut, Riyadh, Paris and Cairo before being appointed British Ambassador to Bahrain from 1999 to 2003 and British Ambassador to Syria from 2003 to 2006.

Retiring from the Diplomatic Service in 2006, he became Representative of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA in the Arab world.

Politics In December 2023, Ford was elected as one of the Deputy Leaders of the Workers Party of Britain. He was the Workers Party of Britain candidate in the 2025 Runcorn and Helsby by-election.

Positions

In 2003, as ambassador to Bahrain, Ford says he sent critical memoranda to London before the Iraq War. Later, he regretted not opposing the Iraq war more forcefully. During his time in Damascus (2003–2006), he says he distanced himself more and more from the official policies.

In 2016, he suggested opposition forces were responsible for an attack on a UN humanitarian convoy in September 2016 which led to the deaths of 10 humanitarians. A UN panel of inquiry said the attack was conducted from the air, and only Syrian and Russian air forces were operating in the area. The UN panel stated "that it did not have evidence to conclude that the incident was a deliberate attack on a humanitarian target".

He accused the British government of lies and political mistakes in Syria from the start of the uprising, thus aggravating the situation. He argued that Prime Minister David Cameron should have either committed British forces or refrained from encouraging opposition forces from mounting a campaign against the Syrian government.

On the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack, he commented to the BBC that "there [had] been no investigation.. not a dodgy dossier - we've not seen any dossier whatever this time". Ford argued there was no proof of the Syrian government's involvement in the attack. He said that he did not believe the Syrian government was responsible for the attack because "t defies belief that [Assad] would bring all this on his head. For no military advantage. The site that was hit had no military significance. It made absolutely no sense. It would have angered the Russians for no other reason: it was simply not plausible". Also in 2017, Ford became a director for the British Syrian Society, a lobby group founded and ran by Fawaz Akhras, Assad's father-in-law.

According to Searchlight magazine, Ford has occasionally been a guest speaker at the "Keep Talking" conspiracy theory group founded by Ian Fantom and Nick Kollerstrom, which has been criticized for its antisemitic rhetoric and Holocaust denial.