Delicate Judgement

In a diplomatic coup to rival any by the former Imperial Haystack, Tumbledown Tessie's Northern Ireland secretary has managed both to distract our free and fearless Press from the triumphs of Chris Graybeing and to make the heir to the House of Windsor look almost useful. The brilliant Karen Bradley, whose previous achievements include not realising that voters in Northern Ireland tend to divide along sectarian lines rather than the simple wogs-outery so popular in the Kingdom's more civilised components, informed Parliament yesterday that killing Irish people isn't a crime provided it's done by the right people, whereupon she toddled off to the Irish embassy for a St Patrick's Day potato party. Her verdict was all the more adroit for being detonated a week before the Public Prosecution Service decides whether to go through the motions of acquitting the perpetrators of the 1972 Bloody Sunday killings, although Bradley did clarify her remarks to the extent of stating that she did not intend to offend anyone. By contrast, the Prince of Wales, who also attended the embassy bloat-and-burble, sought to avoid offending people by the quaintly unfashionable expedient of not saying anything that might give offence. Strangely enough, it seems to have worked even better than the Bradley method.