When Hillary Benn – a committed vegetarian – was made Secretary of State for Environment Food and Rural Affairs in Gordon Brown’s Cabinet back in 2007, the Daily Telegraph reported: ‘The arrival of the bean-eating Mr Benn in charge of livestock…has caused sharp intakes of breath in the farming world.’

The very presence of a veggie in charge of a department dealing with farming – regardless of his views or motivations – was enough to cause consternation.

This might seem a little unhinged – and in all probability it was entirely affected – but lobby groups roughing-up an incoming minister before their posterior has settled in their departmental chair ensures you get their attention.

It makes Government listen and worry about treading on eggshells. In and of itself, this is no bad thing. And, although ministers’ personal beliefs are largely irrelevant, their competency certainly is.

All of which brings us to Northern Ireland.

Clearly, there’s not much everyone here agrees on, but the efficacy of the current Secretary of State is a cause for concern right across the political spectrum.

Since being appointed in January last year, Karen Bradley has trodden on one garden rake after another, quickly acquiring a deserved reputation as something of a clot, as she splats herself in the face with the handle on an alarmingly regular basis.

Her admission in an interview last year that on becoming Secretary of State, she ‘didn’t understand’ that unionists don’t vote for nationalists and vice versa was a display of inexcusable ignorance. At 49, she is of a generation that witnessed daily reporting of the troubles during the 1980s and 1990s. How can the essential nature of the conflict not have seeped-in, by osmosis?

The fact she brought this up herself in a media interview was doubly baffling. She is a corporeal representation of the old quip that it is better to keep quiet and be thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.

Worse, was her howler last month over the contentious issue of the killing of civilians by British state forces:

‘They [British soldiers] were people acting under orders and under instruction and fulfilling their duties in a dignified and appropriate way,’ she told the House of Commons, to widespread ridicule and condemnation.

This was the last straw for many, and while republicans and nationalists might be expected to pile on to a flailing British minister. For me, however, the most searing critique came from the respected unionist commentator, Alex Kane – a fair-minded chronicler of Northern Ireland’s tumultuous politics.

He summed-up her gaffe superbly in, of all places, the staunchly-Unionist Belfast News Letter: ‘Personally, I can’t understand how anyone can be shot dead in a ‘dignified’ way. It was a stupid and grossly offensive thing to say.’

Even Lord Alderdice, the moderate former leader of the cross-community Alliance party, weighed-in last week, criticising Bradley for simply not having the ‘capacity’ for the job.

(For ‘capacity’ I assume he means ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’).

The DUP remains coy about criticising one of their coalition buddies. But a weak and ineffective minister is of benefit to no-one. Especially one with so poor a grasp of the issues and in whom trust has now so palpably drained away.

All of which is to say that it’s time the Northern Ireland parties took a leaf out of the agricultural lobby’s playbook. Rather than enduring her limitless maladroitness, they should get tough.

Boycott Karen Bradley and force Theresa May to replace her.

There is little point in either nationalists or unionists engaging with the political equivalent of the walking dead. So why not send a signal to Westminster that they need to send someone better? In any event, Karen Bradley is an interregnum. A staging post before someone better comes along. As such, she’s not worth meeting with, lobbying or courting.

However, the Northern Ireland parties shouldn’t merely wait for her to be removed in some future reshuffle – as she surely will be – they should take matters into their own hands. There is greater value in ensuring that someone more capable is despatched with haste than in propping up the discounted and discredited incumbent.

Northern Ireland deserves more than having a loyal, but inept, factotum of the Prime Minister foisted on it at such a critical period. Especially as the ministerial inbox just keeps getting deeper and deeper. Restoring the devolved bodies, handling with the fallout from the RHI scandal, the perennially difficult task of dealing with the past; not to mention the small matter of Brexit and the backstop. At so critical a juncture, it is nothing short of reckless that she occupies the post, given she is so manifestly out of her depth.

It’s time for Northern Ireland’s political class to agree on something: Karen Bradley has got to go.