Plop, plop, plop came the cliches from Philip’s dull mind
OOOH, we don’t want to upset the European Union’s ‘political elites’, argued Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond. They are out of touch with their own electorates. If we leave the EU they might give us ‘ two fingers’ and refuse to do business with us in case it encourages their own voters to ask for EU reforms.
Vote Remain because Brussels is so undemocratic. Is there a grottier argument for staying in the EU?
Hammond is that tall, skinny one with the drainpipe voice. Rich. He made a fortune in medical equipment. Vain, too. At a drinks party some years ago I was given a fearful rocket by his wife (fast bowler) for mocking the lovely Philip’s hair, as long and straight as al dente spaghetti. I have since found myself oddly gripped by that barnet, wondering if Mrs Hammond grooms her husband fastidiously every morning like the owner of an Afghan hound at Crufts.
Hammond, P, used to be a ballsy Eurosceptic. Oh yes, as John Major would say. He bagged the Tory nomination for Runnymede and Weybridge, later rising to his Foreign Office prominence, in large part because he was seen as a resolute Brussels basher.
Now that he is in office, naturellement, he has had his head turned. He has come over all Europhile. He has become David Cameron’s mini-me but he is a great deal less eloquent and persuasive. He opened a Commons debate yesterday afternoon, the motion being a broad one about Europe. The Chamber was pretty empty but a few Tory ‘Leave’ types were soon intervening on him.
Sir Edward Leigh ( Con, Gainsborough) rose and was just starting to make some point when there came an eruption of tinny, mechanised chatter, not unlike something from ‘Pinky and Perky’. Eek! It turned out that this was coming from the tablet computer of Bernard Jenkin (Con, Harwich & N Essex) who was sitting beside Sir Edward. He had pressed some button and it took him a while to work out how to put an end to its blathering. Listening to Mr Hammond, one rather felt the same thing. Please: where was the mute button? What a dull speaker he is, the delivery monotonous, cliches dropping from his mouth like bricks from production line. ‘A leap in the dark’ – plop. ‘Business hates uncertainty’ – plop. ‘The proof of the pudding will be in the eating’ – plop, plop, plop.
To such a man the English language is a commodity, not an opportunity for individualism and poetry. Words become nothing more than a means of getting from A to B, rather than something to be enjoyed and explored. This is a dull mind, a procedural plodder, a receiver, not initiator, of orders.
He insisted that we had to stay in the EU because they would not do business with us if we left. Nigel Evans (Con, Ribble Valley) pointed out that the Germans make billions of pounds from us. It was surely unlikely they would surrender such income simply to make a spiteful point. Mr Hammond pulled a little moue of irritation.
At one point he took an illdisguised swipe at Boris Johnson, deploring ‘ charismatic and prominent’ politicians who argued for a second referendum. The ‘charismatic’ was spat out with something sounding very like envy.
JACOB Rees- Mogg (Con, NE Somerset) put it to Mr Hammond that the Prime Minister’s renegotiation deal was ‘a failure’ in that it had not done what the Tory election manifesto last year promised regarding foreigners’ child benefit. Mr Hammond: ‘Any reasonable person will look at the package in the round.’
An amazingly bare- faced admission, this. Yes, we reneged on the manifesto but we gave the voters a ‘ package in the round’ instead. Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Evans looked understandably disgusted.
What the hell is the point of manifestos if a minister just ambles to the Commons a year later and says ‘well, we gave you a package in the round – be grateful for that’? He did not even mention immigration.