‘I don’t want to raise levels of public anxiety.’ Believe it or not, these words came out of the mouth of Sir Keir Starmer. If they were true, one would expect him to announce he was off to live as a hermit in the Hebrides, rather than continue to chair meetings of Cobra.
Yes, in the midst of the continuing crisis in the Middle East, the Prime Minister was answering questions from the liaison committee, mostly made up by his own MPs. He has previously had tetchy sessions here, but today he was on the receiving end of some seriously soft-ball questions on foreign policy. MPs questioned him in such a pathetic and fawning manner that they made the woman who screams the news on North Korean TV look like Jeremy Paxman.
Today he was on the receiving end of some seriously soft-ball questions on foreign policy
One MP asked him about Israel–Palestine. ‘Can I press you on what we will do? Will we issue a statement?’ Sir Keir liked this question; statement drafting is his version of an hour at the seaside. Some of these people don’t think we need nuclear weaponry because a screenshot of a notes app-drafted ticking off will work just as well.
Another MP told him about how wonderful his policy on Iran was going down in Newcastle. The Prime Minister made a little piggy smirk at this accolade. He probably knows that he has lurked at the back of the vegetable crisper of government for too long and curling at the edges and with some unidentified fluff clinging to him, he faces the bin. He has decided that making ‘the right decision’ on Iran is going to be the thing that promotes him to being a Prime Minister in the Alec Douglas-Home/Bonar Law strata as opposed to languishing in the Lord North–Liz Truss memorial tier. What’s particularly funny about this fantasy is that almost all of the PM’s policy decisions on Iran have been accidental swipes in one direction or another. Watching him handle the Middle East has been like watching a blindfolded pig play tennis.
Still, the slaps on the back came from Labour MPs. Indeed, Sir Keir got so comfortable that at one point he stopped using actual English vocabulary: the invented word ‘underfundment’ escaped his lips. Sir Keir’s usual liaison committee nemesis, Alastair Carmichael, was, alas, absent. One member of the committee, however, wasn’t going to join in this game of Prime Ministerial self-congratulation.
Sir Bernard Jenkin asked a series of questions on defence procurement, culminating in wondering how it was that Cyprus had been left so undefended. ‘This smacks of complacency’, purred Sir Bernard.
For some reason, this comment caused Sir Keir to lose his temper. Observing his hissy fits are one of the real highlights of this job. The facial slab deepens in hue, the little trotters tighten their grip on the pen, in the mouth the beginnings of vowels pop around in confused fury, like buccal popcorn.
Huff and puff went Sir Keir before settling on what he clearly thought was a zinger line: ‘Well, this smacks of the fact that for years there was under investment by the last government.’ Move over Groucho Marx. After the initial explosion, Sir Keir tried to style things out as if he had been meaning to be sassy rather than prissy: ‘Er, copyright Ben Wallace’, he retaliated, in a sort of mock sardonic voice. This was his mic drop. One could sense Sir Keir was resisting the urge to click his fingers three times in front of his face, wiggle his booty and go ‘mmmhmmm.’ Sir Bernard was sadly cut off by the chair of the committee. Sir Keir lived to sashay another day.
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