Hunt and blather

Jeremy Hunt got off to a flying start on his first trip to China as the new British foreign secretary. He told his hosts that his Chinese wife, Lucia Guo, was Japanese.

Hunt was supposed to be fostering deeper, closer, more meaningful Sino– British relations but anxious officials from the foreign office didn’t think his blunder was all that helpful, what with the Chinese having long-held animosities towards the Japanese.

By contrast to his predecessor, though, it’s a relatively good start for Jeremy, who still has a fair way to go to reach the buffoonish-heights conquered by Boris Johnson.

Among Boris’s triumphs were his observations on Hillary Clinton (“like a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital”); Barack Obama (“part-Kenyan”); pingpong (he told the Chinese the game was “invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century and called wiff-waff ”); the Commonwealth (“supplies [the Queen] with regular cheering crowds of flag-waving piccaninnies” ); the European Union (“Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried to unify Europe, and it ends tragically”); the president of Turkey (in a limerick: “There was a young fellow from Ankara/ Who was a terrific wankerer/

Till he sowed his wild oats/ With the help of a goat/ But he didn’t even stop to thankera”) et cetera, et cetera.