Reporters were given short notice of a Downing Street announcement by the Prime Minister. Scramble, pilots, scramble!
The rush was hardly worth it. Aside from despatching four RAF Typhoons to Qatar, Sir Keir’s statement was not about urgent military developments. It was, rather, an attempt to explain his unconvincing war leadership.
Although he talked of defence, the primary aim here was political self-defence. Operation Save Sir Keir.
Hopping from foot to foot, he peered through the horizontal frame of his spectacles, the left eyeball throbbing a bit. His eyebrows puckered in begging-spaniel fashion. The effect was one of pressured lopsidedness, the more so when he pronounced ‘Oman’ incorrectly.
‘I know people are worried sick,’ he began. Well, yes, no doubt some are, but why mention it? Why not say, in a honeyed, matinee-idol voice, ‘I am here to reassure you all’?
The person most ‘worried sick’ was possibly Sir Keir himself. Revelling in how terrible everything was, he quacked about people being ‘scared’. That is not a good word for a leader at such a time. Where were the theatrics of positive grip? Where was the projection of optimistic competence?
He chose to talk about ‘vulnerable Brits’. An ugly abbreviation. Defeatist talk.
The setting was Downing Street’s press suite. Handsome wood, a Union Jack, and our hero in a smart blue suit with blue tie. He kept pinching the fingers of his right hand together, hoping to show intensity. Rock-like stillness might have worked better.
‘I know people are worried sick,’ Sir Keir began. Well, yes, no doubt some are, but why mention it?, writes QUENTIN LETTS
He claimed to be displaying ‘calm, level-headed leadership in the national interest’ and he spoke of ‘the longstanding British position’. The intention was to suggest a worldly preparedness. It was a pity that his performance did not convey that. A calm premier irons any note of tetchiness from his voice. A proper commander of the nation makes military logistics sound exciting, not whiny.
There was much about ‘pre-deployment’. This, with the commonly-flourished ‘de-escalate’, is a newish buzzword. ‘Pre-deployment’ means ‘deployment’ but it lays claim to an additional layer of strategic shrewdness, an idea of ‘I was on top of this all along’.
Another phrase much used in recent days has been ‘putting jets into the sky’, as if there is anywhere else you would send them.
The journalists were not buying this thesis of Sir Keir as a tactical genius. BBC political editor Chris Mason mentioned perceptions of Sir Keir’s ‘indecision, prevarication and lack of preparedness’. Ouch.
Channel 4 asked about claims that Ed Miliband led a pacifist ambush in Cabinet that initially forced Sir Keir to deny Donald Trump access to our air bases. GB News put it to the Labour government that they had let down our allies in the Gulf.
During these questions Sir Keir bit on the inside of his left cheek. He opened and closed his goldfish mouth. He trumpet-flexed his lips. Frank Spencer in an ooh-Betty dither.
You never get an American president fidgeting like that. They clench their jaws and stare into the half-distance, butch and resolute. Sir Keir, at this press conference, was an entirely vegetarian proposition. Alkaline. Huffy.
Asked about our ‘special relationship’ with Washington, he essayed a chuckle and argued ‘it’s in operation right now’. When had he last spoken to Donald Trump? ‘Saturday evening.’
At the time of writing, the destroyer Dragon is still in Portsmouth, loading tins of baked beans into her galley. Sir Keir huffed and puffed and said that the Defence Secretary was ‘on the ground in Cyprus’. That ‘on the ground’ was like his planes being ‘in the sky’. Unnecessary. Evidence of bluster.
These are unwelcome things to write about a PM in a time of military crisis. At such an hour we Righties crave the smack of certitude, even if we disagree with its conclusions. This chap veers all over the place. He must be terrible at roundabouts.
Sir Keir did not let the event drag. After a few questions he waddled out, fast as a man whose enema had just taken effect.
