Diplomatic Discourtesy

Bullingdon diplomacy is often at its subtlest when foreigners are being tortured and murdered, but the British ambassador to Egypt has taken things to a whole new level by staging his very own Twitter fail. Weeks after the torture and murder in Cairo of an Italian PhD student who was researching trade unions, five British expenses claimants were due to visit. Naturally, the ambassador decided to use the great event as an opportunity for some corporate bonding with the proles, despite the well-known risks involved. He posted a Twitter poll asking the great unwashed what issues should be discussed, offering as choices tourism, currency, terrorism and "political reform", by which he doubtless meant the pressing need for more potential asylum seekers to be shot before they reach the Mediterranean. Mere days after the PhD student's body was discovered, the British trade envoy to Egypt had been belching forth about "a land of real opportunity for British companies"; presumably he was referring to those charming people at Serco and G4S, but human rights organisations and the Italian government have taken a less compassionate view of the matter and are wondering why the case, let alone human rights more generally, are not on the ambassador's agenda. One possible explanation is that the ambassador used to be Britain's Head Boy's fag in charge of wog affairs, and that the victim was an educational migrant who had somehow been allowed to infiltrate Cambridge University.