Can a career-diplomat ambassador be more unprofessional than Vanessa Frazier?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Malta’s ambassador to Rome is another Taghna Lkoll political appointee like Mark Micallef (Spain), Norman Hamilton (London), Vince Camilleri (ex Paris), Ray Azzopardi (Belgium), Marisa Micallef (ex Washington) and the rest of the outfit.

You’ll find below her completely unprofessional reaction to this post I wrote earlier in the evening about the way she uses her position to promote freebie handbags given to her by a ‘designer’ who is part and parcel of the Taghna Lkoll faction.

Because that is what ambassadors do, isn’t it – they read a critical blog-post and, instead of telling themselves that if they can’t stand the heat they should get out of the kitchen, and that ambassadors should respond to criticism only of their work, and then with a clarification to their boss and never directly to the press, they hit Facebook with a hysterical “I’m so hurt” schoolgirl bitchfest doing the farcical Labour thing – which not even that lout Balzan does anymore – of Not Mentioning Her Name.

This ridiculous woman gives career women a bad name by ticking all the right boxes for the ‘silly, daft woman’ cliche that we have to fight against every day of our working lives: fawning, gushing, touchy, prone to hysteria when criticised, self-obsessed and convinced that an obsession with clothes and fashion is actually a selling-point in a serious career – because, of course, that’s how Christine Lagarde got to the top of the International Monetary Fund, by working on her outfits and posting photos of her Sunita Mukhi glitter-bags and sobbing when mean journalists point out that she shouldn’t be doing that.

If Mrs Frazier were to devote half as much time to sharpening up her observation skills rather than her wardrobe, one of the things that would strike her now is just how ludicrous the British Prime Minister’s quirky-shoe affectation now looks as she struggles with the real, harsh world of Brexit outside the comfort of a nondescript cabinet post which allowed for such frivolity in the context of British newspapers.

Mrs May walked into the EU summit meeting last week wearing a pair of ruby slippers like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (they were Dorothy’s magic slippers) and she looked completely foolish. Nobody there was ever going to get the reference, because even if some of the men there were friends of Dorothy, they would have had to be British or American to get the reference, even if they didn’t have more important things on their mind. I got the reference though, and had just the one thought: “You bloody stupid woman – you’re in it up to your neck and you want people to know that you’re prioritising being witty with footwear. Only for nobody to get it anyway.”

Say what you like about men (and I do all the time), but you never catch them being this idiotic about their outfits, even though they can be terribly idiotic in other ways. I can’t picture David Cameron planning what shoes to wear for a European summit, or a Maltese ambassador who is a career diplomat defending his sartorial choices on Facebook, showing off his manbag or bursting into tears because a journalist criticises his outfit.

What rubbish people, honestly. Women who are obsessed with fashion should stick to working in fashion. An ambassador should not be behaving like Carina Camilleri.