Lord Chipping Norton fails to tickle committee pink on his first grilling

Since being parachuted into the Foreign Office, Dave “call me Lord Chipping Norton” Cameron has managed to avoid a grilling by MPS – but examination day had to come. Wearing his best suit and a pair of loafers, he strolled into the foreign committee with a retinue of young interns – probably relatives of friends – and a face coloured pink by sunny jaunts and Christmas chillaxing; not just a man who had surfeited on turkey but, from the look of him, one who had been basted, stuffed and cooked on gas mark 5.

Any questions? A softball, first: were you as shocked as us that Rishi made you foreign sec? It was a “pleasant surprise”, he said, as if he’d been offered sherry. Diplomacy is easy for a man of his experience – though if Dave imagines he’s basically still PM, he met his match in committee chair Alicia Kearns, who imagines she is the real foreign secretary. “What is the UK’S legal view on whether or not Gaza is occupied?” she asked, and shattered the Etonian mystique.

Like many young Tory MPS, Kearns isn’t a Tory (she thinks men can become women and all that twaddle), but she at least looks like one. Dressed in 1955 and supremely self-confident, she has the manner of the games mistress who always cried “aim for the ankles, girls!” and turned lacrosse into the Somme.

Here, she played the cruel trick of asking Cameron questions he ought to know but wagered he didn’t. Dave waffled: do you mean was Gaza occupied before Israel occupied it, or now that it’s under occupation? Miss Kearns gave him a withering look. Britain literally calls it “the occupied Palestinian territories”, you stupid boy.

Never mind. Can you tell us how many British hostages have been released? Cameron put on his old lady glasses and riffled through his ring binder. The answer, he guessed, was “zero”. The SNP’S Brendan O’hara asked if he’d seen any legal advice that Israel might be in breach of international law, speaking in a language – Glaswegian – with which the foreign sec was unfamiliar. “Can you say that again?” replied Cameron. He did, and it cleared up nothing. “I’m not a lawyer,” Dave said, as if that’s what he wanted to know, adding that he couldn’t remember everything the lawyers told him either.

“Sir Philip,” snapped Kearns, turning to the flunky sat next to Lord Dave, can you tell us if the Israelis are breaching the law? “You are asking me a technical question,” replied Sir Philip, who is more used to abstractions such as: “Would you prefer red or white, ambassador?”

Look, said Cameron, trying to defuse the tension by displaying some of that emollience that got him this gig, “I am trying to be helpful by explaining how my job works. Is that helpful?”

“No,” barked O’hara – and Cameron smiled triumphantly, for he had finally understood a word the man said.

He was interrogated further on Diego Garcia – “a talented man, the world of football will miss him” – and Western Sahara, about which he promised to “get back to you” when he’d located it on a map.

Astonishing to think that Sunak couldn’t find one MP named “Alicia” better qualified to do his job.