INSULT EXPORT
MR NEIL Kinnock has delivered himself of various uncomplimentary remarks about Mrs Thatcher and her government as he has travelled across the world this week. In Rome, he agreed with Mr Craxi, the Italian prime minister, that Mrs Thatcher was pretty frightful; and in the Horn of Arica, he took advantage of being close to the starving to attack her government's record on aid. In doing so, he is, of course, paying Mrs Thatcher back for her remarks about miners, trade unions and others when she was cutting a dash among the free marketeers of the East earlier this year. But two wrongs do not make a right. Until recently, there was a convention that politicians did not criticise one another when abroad. This was based on the notion that it was unhelpful to Britain to carry its internal quarrels to the furthest reaches of the earth. It also embodied a psychological truth — the man who criticises his fellow countrymen abroad diminishes himself. He looks petty-minded, partisan and somehow unfair. Mrs Thatcher and Mr Kinnock would do themselves a good turn if they were to keep their insults strictly for the domestic market.
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