Foreign Affairs committee chair tackles Boris Johnson over 'humour' diplomacy

A rising star Tory MP and former Army officer has appeared to tackle Boris Johnson for his outspoken diplomatic remarks.

Tom Tugendhat warned it was "really, really hard to do cross-cultural humour" after the Foreign Secretary's recent outbursts.

Mr Johnson has faced criticism for saying a Libyan city would become the "next Dubai" if they "clear the dead bodies away", and reciting a colonial poem in Myanmar.

After calls from Tory MPs for him to be sacked, chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in Parliament Mr Tugendhat said he wanted the top job one day.

Speaking of Mr Johnson, he told The House magazine: "He's certainly got a lot of passion for the United Kingdom and has a way of expressing himself which certainly carries a lot of noise.

"There are many people who don't understand quite how difficult it is to translate humour, because humour is fundamentally cultural. It is really, really hard to do cross-cultural humour.

"I think there are ways of doing diplomacy. I've done it in Afghanistan, in Iraq and Saudi (Arabia) and across parts of Africa and most of the Middle East.

"I just think that it's very, very hard to make humour work in international environments, which is why very few serious politicians try it."

Mr Tugendhat, who is tipped as a future Tory leader by some, is a Lieutenant Colonel who completed tours during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the same interview he said Britain should put its values ahead of raw economics when it comes to dealing with overseas regimes.

His comments come after Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon suggested it was "unhelpful" to arms sales negotiations for MPs to criticise Saudi Arab on its human rights record.

Mr Tugendhat said: "We must be realistic as to what we're doing when we do sell arms."

"And part of that has to be within a context of, as I say, a rules-based system.

"Saudi Arabia has caused some issues for us in that, and other nations have too. But it's certainly not wrong to enable countries to defend themselves."