Canadian envoy broke the No 1 rule

Having experience as a high-level adviser to foreign diplomats, I understand the role an ambassador plays in representing a country.

When Kevin Vickers, the Canadian ambassador to Ireland, accosted an Irish nationalist protester at a joint Irish-Anglo state memorial in Dublin, which remembered British soldiers who died during Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, he broke the number-one rule of being a diplomat: Don’t start problems.

A commemoration in Ireland of British soldier casualties during the Rising is likely to go over about as well as a German World War II veteran’s memorial in Israel. Attendance at such an event is likely to invite controversy.