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In the good old days of diplomacy, nations spoke to each other by means of the diplomatic note. Now Twitter has taken over. In quite the most extraordinary statement by the Ambassador of a

major power, one very friendly to Britain, Germany’s representative to the Court of St James, Andreas Michaelis, posted this tweet last week: “After the Brexit remarks of the PM I wonder if

Germany can still claim being an independent country. Germany is state party to hundreds of international treaties. Underlying compromises have certainly not eroded our sovereignty. Same

would hold true of a Brexit deal.” One of the German foreign ministry’s most senior officials, its Political Director, was in London last week. So it is a fair assumption that Ambassador

Michaelis’s intervention in British internal politics could not have happened without Chancellor Merkel’s approval. During the eight years I spent at the Foreign Office, no UK ambassador

would have said anything like that, unless they had instructions to do so, or had express clearance from London. The response of the Foreign Office was to “call in” the Ambassador to be

rebuked by David Frost. Normally it would be the head of the FCO’s European Department or perhaps the FCO’s political director who would lecture the erring Ambassador. But now Lord Frost,

whose most senior diplomatic posting was ambassador to Denmark, is a power in the land. More senior diplomats must do as he says. Germany defined itself after the war as a _Rechtsstaat — 

_that is, a state based on law. Rule of law is the glue that holds Germany together. Treaties such as the Withdrawal Agreement are international law. William Gladstone insisted in the 19th

century that Britain must always abide by the “arbitrament of law” and Boris Johnson appears in the eyes of Germany and others to be ready to tear up that principle. When I was an FCO

minister the only time I had to call in an ambassador was when a Gulf state was hiding in its embassy a man wanted by the police in connection with a serious sexual offence. For the FCO to

call in the German Ambassador over tweeting the official German position on the rule of law between states is remarkable. Ambassador Michaelis was in charge of handling Germany’s response to

Vladmir Putin’s annexation of Crimea, which amounted to the invasion of a sovereign UN member state. German sanctions on Russia, still in place, were based on responding to Vladmir Putin’s

assault on international treaty law. It may explain why Berlin is so sensitive to Mr Johnson’s pronunciamento that he could disregard international law. Ambassador Michaelis’s tweet has gone

viral. Newspapers like France’s _Libération_ and others are quoting it. Normally, diplomats in Europe do not comment on the internal politics of friends and allies, but Johnson’s dismissal

of the rule of law has broken this taboo. In 1933 the German Parliament passed the _Ermächtigungsgesetz_ — the famous Enabling Act that allowed the government to overrule existing rules and

laws in Germany if it were judged necessary to do so by the new administration. There are aspects of the Internal Market Bill, not just on Brexit, which transfer powers from devolved regions

and elected councils to ministers and unelected functionaries in London. But no — a thousand times _Nein_, there is no comparison between Berlin 1933 and London 2020. Even so, in my

lifetime no British government has tabled a bill which explicitly gives it the right to ignore international law. Defending this is not easy. For British diplomacy this is not a happy time.