Diplomatic Business

The Minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns, Willem den Haag, is suffering yet more persecution over his entirely innocent role as special nuncio to the Conservatives' holy land of Belize. It was during den Haag's stint as leader that the Golden Bull of Belize, Lord Ashcroft, first inserted his massive wad into the party's various available orifices and began spraying his life-giving unction in all directions, especially towards the right. By one of those benign coincidences which so often occur in the careers of party donors, Lord Ashcroft was subsequently nominated for his peerage by den Haag himself, on the basis of some Daveybloke-style cast-iron guarantees about tax payments.

Den Haag subsequently lost the general election and was removed to make way for the even more statesmanlike Iain Duncan Smith; but the spontaneous natural affection between Lord Ashcroft and his little friend continued to flourish. In his capacity as Daveybloke's shadow minister for Wogs, Frogs and Huns, den Haag travelled to more than twenty foreign countries, using the services of a company owned by Lord Ashcroft. Den Haag was accompanied on these trips by Lord Ashcroft himself, who doubtless wished to ensure that den Haag was not unduly bothered by autograph hunters and that the cabin service was up to standard. Nevertheless, some nasty, snide voices at the Foreign Office were raised to suggest that Lord Ashcroft might be using den Haag as a means to gain privileged access to the officials of foreign governments. One diplomat even queried why den Haag had broken European protocol by meeting Cuban ministers without meeting dissidents or human rights activists as well - as though the Conservatives' record on international law and human rights were not fully as clear as New Labour's, and their opinion of European directives considerably clearer.

Since gaining office, den Haag has said that he will now condescend to keep to the EU protocol, at least until Daveybloke's alliance with various East European flat-earth societies becomes powerful enough to overturn it. In most countries with British values that would be the end of the matter; yet still den Haag is attacked and hounded and written about once every few months, almost as much as Honest Andy Coulson has been. It is to be hoped that, once the British press consists entirely of Rupert Murdoch and the Daily Mail, this sort of unscrupulous journalism will finally come to an end.