G7: Where the banter gets bitchy as the male leaders decide who is more butch

While finding it impossible to encounter anything much light-hearted to say about the current dreadful spectacle in Ukraine, it makes a fine change to note that judging by appearances has crossed the gender divide for once.

Instead of women getting it in the neck (and everywhere else), men are now being taken to task for getting their bits out.

Or at least, the president of Russia is, in a stunning show of sartorial solidarity by the leaders, heaven help us, of the free world.

In the week MPs were told not to bring their babies (a practice mainly confined, you will be shocked to hear, to women) into the House and Dominic Raab was caught winking at Angela Rayner across the dispatch box during their stint deputising for Big Dog and Mr Cellophane at PMQs, it was good to see men can be just as bitchy about other chaps as women allegedly are about those of sub-standard beauty and taste.

It was truly fascinating to observe the G7 leaders assuming that shoulder-hugging each other like a boy band and going without a tie (the men only, of course) was going to confront Vladimir Putin with his shortcomings.

Which took the form of a digging-in-theribs, smirking, boys’ club-type sniggering about the current Tsar’s chest-baring pictures atop a long-suffering horse and much “banter” about who is more butch than the man whose troops are currently butchering Ukraine.

One had held out hopes, although not many of them, that Canada’s Justin Trudeau might know better, in spite of illjudged “fancy-dress” revelations from the past.

But Boris Johnson taking anyone to task about what they wear or don’t wear? This from a man seen – fully clothed, thank whatever lord you believe in – hanging grimacing from a zip-wire, incapable of putting up an umbrella at a memorial and seemingly unable to access a trouser press, let alone an ethical approach to international law.

In the old days, to which, as current attacks on the rights of women increase, we appear rapidly to be returning, pursedlipped observers would have remarked that it was dreadful that his wife let him go out like that.

So perhaps it is no wonder that he tried to get the present Mrs Johnson a highfalutin’ job in the Foreign Office so he could get her out of his uncombed hair over what egg-stained tie to wear with what rumpled shirt. Always assuming, of course, that he didn’t go full Vladimir and decide not to wear one at all.

One can only agree with the horrible Putin’s riposte that the sight of Mr Johnson in “taps aff ” mode would certainly be about as close to “disgusting” as one might care to get.

Although it’s probably just as well that Carrie seems to have little influence over his permanently malfunctioning wardrobe. Think what a woman who can spend 840 quid on a roll of tacky gold wallpaper and press donors for 150 grand for a kid’s treehouse could do if let loose with a credit card in the menswear department of Primark…

G7 leaders were shoulderhugging like a boy band

EYE WIDE SHUT: Dominic Raab winked at Angela Rayner across the dispatch box when they deputised at PMQs.