These two are linked by a consummate lack of appropriate emotion

This joint press conference (see video below) given by Matteo Renzi and Joseph Muscat – who was there, as Renzi remarks cuttingly, because he happened to be on holiday in Italy even though it’s Germany which has the real problem with immigration – makes it glaringly apparent that the two of them have something worrying in common: a lack of appropriate emotion.

That press conference was held the very day – Thursday last week – that the photographs of the drowned body of Aylan Kurdi were published round the world, causing shock and distress to millions, with even hardened journalists breaking down in tears and writing impassioned editorials.

Politicians throughout Europe issued stark, bleak statements that day and in the days which followed.

But look at these two – Renzi has the usual dead eyes of a lampuka caught 24 hours ago, and his trademark ‘bored and indifferent as hell’ expression, while Muscat laughs and smirks and looks as pleased as punch in his borrowed violet tie.

At least Renzi has picked a tie appropriate to the solemnity of the occasion. Except that it doesn’t look like a solemn occasion at all because of the idiotic behaviour of those two.

You would expect these two men, who have small children themselves, to be particularly able to empathise and to feel sorrow at those photographs. But their lack of involvement is spectacular.

Cameron got the tone right after months of getting it wrong. Even Hollande did, and found himself moved to action. Merkel is the queen of the appropriate tone in this crisis. Viktor Orban, too, who inhabits the opposite spectrum of opinion, speaks with the appropriate tone, if with completely inappropriate content.

Yet these two farcical jerks look like they can’t wait to knock off for a couple of jokes and some very superficial chat over a cocktail. No sense of occasion – and no emotion, except for pleasure and excitement at their own achievements.

I wouldn’t say it is “incredible”. I would just say it is incredibly inappropriate, but so very typical of a couple of men so far up their own nether regions that they can’t see daylight, and both of whom appear entirely incapable of empathy.