Three months after Pope Benedict XVI’s historic visit to this country was
hailed as a great success, David Cameron has failed to find anyone to send
to the Vatican as our ambassador.
Mandrake can disclose that William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, is to send an interim charge d’affairs to run Britain’s embassy in the Holy See after a string of potential candidates, including Ann Widdecombe, Lord Patten of Barnes and Edward Leigh, turned down the role.
“It is becoming a genuine embarrassment,” says my man at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
“The original idea was for it to be a political appointee, but now the job is being advertised here. The Government should never have indicated that it would be a political appointment if they did not have someone lined up.”
The “temp” will take up the post after Francis Campbell leaves at the end of
next month. It is understood that the interim envoy will be in the Vatican
for six months.
Widdecombe, a former Home Office minister, said in the summer that she had
turned down the job because of an eye problem.
“Even before that happened, I was debating it,” she admitted last month. “I
was thinking, do I really want three years, as an expat? Do I really want a
job that’s going to take all day, every day in a heaving, hot capital city?”
This week, Lord Patten, the former Tory chairman, who is the chancellor of
Oxford University, applied for the job of chairman of the BBC Trust.
SIC: TC/UK