When political photo ops turn bad

Lady Ashton was lined up for a meet and greet with the Serbian president – before suddenly realising she didn't know what he looked like. Is this the future of politics?

Poor Lady Ashton. She was filmed being bumptious and clueless in what looked like the Holiday Inn Brussels, on her way to a photo op with the new Serbian president, Tomislav Nikolic.

Except – ha ha – Ashton didn't know what he looked like. There was a flap while someone found a picture of "Serb One". Minutes later the two politicians emerged for their gurn-and-go, all warm handshakes and stilted banter. Good old Twitter, our crowdsourced moral compass, did its scandalised jeering thing for a while before moving on to Jimmy Carr's accountant, and the dwarf in Game of Thrones who's a bit like Martin Amis.

Ashton's job wasn't to wonder why she was shaking hands with an old friend of Slobodan Milosevic, who wants to annexe parts of Croatia. Her job was simply to shake hands. In the churning, semi-fictionalised world of European politics, the photo op is the one reassuring task for a constantly changing roster of chumps who don't even recognise one another. For all we know the Serbian team were panicking on the other side of the door, too.

"Which one is Lady Ashton?" "Looks like she used to front Steeleye Span. Can't miss her. She's wearing some sort of weird hanging sash, might be a religious thing." "Oh, God, she's not Muslim is she?" "Not sure. Just don't mention Srebrenica." "Actually, WHO is she?" "Er … the European Union's high representative of the union for foreign affairs and security policy." "You've just made that up. And by the way, who are YOU? Where's Bogdan?" "He left to join a thinktank in Strasbourg. I am Zoran." "Hey, pleasure to meet you, Zoran, could you get me a coffee?"

Every day there's an important new faction in Greece or Spain that suddenly has leverage because yet another government must be formed by lunchtime or "the markets" will be cross. And they all have enigmatic names. "Ooh, Golden Dawn. They sound wholesome. Like granola …"

No wonder nobody knows who anyone is any more. Political careers are getting shorter. A bored barrister can have a little dabble, ease into a safe seat for a couple of terms then mooch off into a portfolio semi-retirement of lobbying and PR in less than a decade. And half the countries in Europe are now run by fragile, fractious, impermanent coalitions. Including ours, I hope.