Beefy At Davos is an episode of long-running sitcom The United Kingdom that we’d all like to watch
I am disappointed to note that a certain mirth has attended the news that Beefy Botham has been made a UK trade envoy. There seems to be some sense that his lordship is not up to the job, despite being a former cricketer with his own wine range, and despite the position of trade envoy being one that even Prince Andrew could manage for many years.
Not that Beefy has stepped directly into Andrew’s sweat-free shoes – Lord Botham’s appointment is Australia-specific, announced on Monday by pitilessly bubbly trade secretary Liz Truss. As she put it, “Ian will bat for business Down Under” – a statement that underscored the fact that if cliches were trade, Liz would be running a huge surplus. Alas, not everyone is as meaninglessly upbeat as her. (They couldn’t be: it requires suspending all critical faculties in the service of positioning oneself as the sort of glass-half-full person who would make a nice badminton partner or chancellor of the exchequer to a man who can’t bear bad news.)
