Let’s look this pair of gift pandas in the mouth

The Chinese are doing their panda thing again, buying international goodwill by depositing one of these doomed and slightly sinister creatures with any country which might otherwise have an objection to their foreign or domestic policy. Worried about human rights and prisoners of conscience? ‘Ere you go, mate, have a panda and shut your gob. Top-quality panda this is, ten years old, one previous owner, runs on bamboo, very eco-friendly. Shove it in a zoo and watch the kiddies pour in. We do a sideline in panda mugs and panda toys — all manufactured by kiddies, as it happens — and we’ll bung you some of them too for a pony.’

It usually works, the so-called panda diplomacy, no matter how many people the Chinese government might be arresting or shooting at any particular moment. It worked a treat, for example, on Edward Heath — who perhaps felt a certain concord with a baleful, solitary and endangered creature incapable of sexual intercourse.