“It is difficult,” Keir Starmer said, every inch the headmaster explaining why the blocked toilets in the school hall means that the sixth form disco may, regrettably, be cancelled. “Of course it’s difficult.”
He was telling us that he will have to sadly decline Donald Trump’s invitation to join in the enormously successful US war against Iran. Overnight, the president, in a sign of just how well things were going, had issued a series of pleas and threats to the world in general and Nato in particular, demanding minesweepers and the SAS and for Melania to win the Best Picture Oscar.
Would it have helped the president in these demands if he had not, just a few weeks ago, been threatening to invade Danish territory, if his flunkies hadn’t spent the past year insulting every single ally, if anyone thought that there was the slightest chance that he would remember anything they did and be grateful for it? Possibly. Or possibly they still wouldn’t fancy the idea of getting involved in a Middle Eastern war that is apparently being run by Grandpa Simpson.
Or, to put it every slightly more politely, here is the prime minister: “We will not be drawn into the wider war.” Might we perhaps help in some way to reopen the Strait of Hormuz? “We need a credible, viable plan.” If only someone in the Pentagon had thought to come up with one of those a couple of weeks ago.
Elsewhere at the same time, Richard Tice, Reform’s Head of Turning Up When Nigel Can’t Be Bothered, was giving his own press conference, announcing how much money the party’s “DOGE” efficiency unit has saved local councils. This is calculated through a process that is highly scientific, if somewhat uncertain. In June, it was £350 million. In September it was £10 billion. On Monday? Tice didn’t actually spin a wheel, to our disappointment, but he revealed it was £325 million.
“If you wanna save money,” Tice went on, “vote Reform.” This is a subject about which he turns out to know quite a bit. The Sunday Times had revealed the previous day that his business had used complicated tax structures to avoid hundreds of thousands in corporation tax. Not that Tice was bothered by this report. We know this because he raised it without being asked, telling us at length that he wasn’t bothered, reading out tweets from the journalist concerned in a completely unbothered way, and reminding us of previous stories about his tax affairs that had come to nothing and also, crucially, had bothered him so little that he had forgotten all about them.
Someone eventually managed to change the subject. What did Tice think about the war? “I thank the US and the Israelis,” he said. Perhaps he owns oil futures.
Back in Downing Street, reporters turned to the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. It’s worth printing Starmer’s answer in full. “Look, the independent advisor has looked at the tail end of last week at the process we went through, and he said it was the proper process,” the prime minister explained. “The process wasn’t strong enough, and that’s why last year, I moved to strengthen the process, and will strengthen it again. My reflection is the process wasn’t strong enough. The process was followed. Was the process strong enough? No, it wasn’t.”
Did you get that? Let me simplify. The process was the right process, but it was also wrong. So although they went through the right process the right way, they got the wrong result. But the good news is that there’s now a process underway to change the process so that in future the process will be the right process. And we all just have to have a little more faith in that process.
And what was that process? So far as anyone can tell, it involves asking each candidate: “Are you now or have you ever been Lord Mandelson?” And then, if they answered in the affirmative, following up with: “How do you fancy living in a big house in Washington?”
