Boris Johnson's tribute to Prince Philip proves that he is the most unsuitable person in the country to be Foreign Secretary

'Bastion of political incorrectness' translates in plain spoken English as 'rude and racist'

Boris Johnson has praised Prince Philip as a 'bastion of political incorrectness' (PA)

“What a fantastic servant of the UK. One of the last great impregnable bastions of political incorrectness. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

So said Britain’s top diplomat, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, better known as just Boris, in a tweet about Prince Philip, a man who might have done more to damage Britain’s international standing by crassly insulting people than even he has.

It rather speaks to the character of our Foreign Secretary that the first thing he chose to celebrate about the Queen’s consort upon his retirement from Royal duties was his penchant for putting his foot firmly in his mouth.

When Boris talks of a “bastion of political incorrectness” he’s actually indulging in a pernicious form of political correctness himself, just one that is common to the political right rather than the left. Perhaps it’s time for us to stop bowing to it.

I’ll get the ball rolling: “Bastion of political incorrectness” translates in plain spoken English as “rude and racist”.

With that tweet BoZo has shown himself to be nothing more than a slimy and cynical opportunist blowing a dog whistle that will be heard by a corps of lumpen racist trolls he thinks might be stupid enough to back a bid by him to become leader of the Conservative Party. He is an unrepentant, unprincipled, mean minded little piece of pond life. Is that politically incorrect enough for you on the right?

Of course, I realise I’m not being entirely fair to pond life with that comparison. Pond life serves a useful purpose.

I feel a teensy bit guilty about stooping to BoZo’s level by insulting him so. But I haven’t quite met him at the bottom because there is one crucial distinction in what I’m doing and his hero Prince Philip has done in the past. I’m taking a potshot at their actions, rather than striking out at someone’s race, or their nationality, or their gender.

Here’s what people like Boris, who regularly decry what they claim to be left wing “political correctness”, wilfully ignore: There is nothing “PC” or otherwise about simply being respectful to people who are different to yourself. There nothing “PC” about avoiding petty stereotyping.

You do rather wonder why a minority of people find that so hard when most Britons manage just fine. My nine-year-old doesn't find it at all hard. BoZo and Phil, by contrast, are grown men, who should know better.

I wonder what BoZo’s parents would think were they to see him cheering Prince Phil on in the corner of a pub while the latter rants about Hungarians, or New Guineans (he has witlessly taken shots at both) and not being able to be horrible to them in polite society while other patrons try to avoid them.

Did I say pub? Perhaps I should have quoted, I don’t know, Annabel’s, where people like them go for the privilege of paying fifty quid, or whatever they charge, for a beer if that’s what it takes to keep the oiks from multicultural London outside.

At this point someone will pipe up that Phil is a product of his age and of the age in which he was brought up, when enlightened attitudes were less common than they are now.

I don’t buy that. I’ve met lots of older people who wouldn’t dream of throwing around racist insults. Remember, too, that the Prince has spent his life globetrotting. He doesn’t have the excuse of a sheltered upbringing. He should long ago have learned how to behave when meeting people from other cultures.

Perhaps that fact that he never has is a consequence of the cringing, servile deference with which he has been treated by everyone he encounters, including the execrable BoZo. That can go to people’s heads. Celebrities, who frequently get the same, sometimes behave with similar crassness.

Except that when they do, people are quick to criticise and ridicule them. Prince Phil gets a pass from the politically correct right for being “politically incorrect”.

Such hypocrisy stinks. So does BoZo.