Oh dear, politicians who get muddled

The newish UK foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, is the politician who when being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 in a former government role as Culture Secretary, was introduced by the presenter who fell foul of a classic and stupendously rude spoonerism, involving the letter "H" and "C". He and the presenter recovered from that almighty faux pas and Hunt went on to greater things, a decently long spell as Health Secretary and now Foreign Secretary, following the resignation of Boris Johnson. But now he has committed the worse sin of all, by getting something basically pretty straightforward about his wife totally wrong. Visiting Beijing and standing as tall and straight as he could to underline his importance, Hunt referred to his wife as Japanese. Actually she is Chinese-born which I presume he knew when he met her and asked her to marry him ten years ago. Well, we can all get confused about people. I called someone I had known for years George when within a millisecond I knew he was Peter. But to say to your CHINESE host that you are proud to have a JAPANESE wife when you could have gained innumerable brownie points by saying she was Chinese, just like him, is so bizarre there is very little explanation that can sensibly be given without making him sound a total prat. Ok, Hunt speaks Japanese for some reason and was showing off his linguistic abilities to Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister, who also speaks Japanese. Sometimes the brain works in mysterious ways and perhaps because he was speaking Japanese he could only think of Japanese things and made his wife Japanese. But, no, that really isn't an explanation. What could the poor wife Lucia Guo have thought when she was informed by her husband that she was Japanese? It's much worse than a spoonerism. But it's a warning to all public figures. Always get your facts right when referring to wives, children and parents. Other mistakes can more easily be laughed off. US Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W Bush both once declared they were visiting a particular country when in fact they were in another particular country. And President George HW Bush famously vomited into the lap of the Japanese prime minister at a state banquet in Tokyo in 1992. But he never claimed his wife was anything but an American.