Diplomatic Boris proves the snootocracy wrong again
HoW they hooted, those Bremoaners, when Boris Johnson was made Foreign secretary back in July. ‘it’ll be a disaster and he won’t have a clue,’ they claimed. Diplomacy, you see, had become one of those specialised and lofty pursuits reserved for People Like Them.
To be a Foreign secretary you had to be a grey technocrat, preferably a lawyer or a bore with a quiver full of opaque opinions. You were not allowed to use lively phrases or bubble with olde England merriment. Good lord, no.
Diplomacy was drab and robotic. it belonged not to the populus but to the prosaic, turf-defending clerisy. Philip Hammond was just the ticket.
Testosterone-fuelled Boris, with his linguistic exuberance, would soon ignite World War Three by goosing some global titan’s popsy or by lobbing Wodehousian wisecracks at a po-faced Middle Eastern potentate.
He would make Donald Trump look like Demosthenes. He would park a buttock on a nuclear button and thus accidentally send a Polaris missile fizzing up from one of our subs off the Pembrokeshire coastline, destination Vladivostok. Whoops!
Like so many of the snootocracy’s tutting airs post-Brexit, it has proved not quite right. Boris did an early-morning session yesterday in front of the Commons foreign affairs select committee and he performed almost faultlessly. He had done his prep. He looked alert. He spoke with caution – yet still in an accessible, interesting way.
He even coped with some porridgey vocabulary from a scots Nationalist on the committee, North East Fife’s stephen Gethins, who accused him of ‘not having a scooby’. Boris barely blinked. syria, Europe, the Yemen, russia, the Commonwealth – these were just some of the topics during the long meeting chaired by Crispin Blunt (Con), who has grown a grey beard worthy of a Venetian doge. Boris sat between two Whitehall high-ups. Did they look a little queasy at the start?
To watch such a naturally eloquent batsman block out several overs of crafty bowling was, it has to be admitted, a nerve-fraying affair. The Press crouched in the slips, awaiting a loose flash of willow.
There were one or two close snicks, perhaps. Labour’s Mike Gapes got him to admit he was proud to be a ‘world citizen’, a breed Theresa May attacked in her recent party conference speech. At another point Boris nearly said ‘balls’ but corrected it to ‘nonsense’. He slalomed his way round the multi-syllabled names of leading statesmen in Cyprus.
He spat out the acronyms of political parties in Kurdistan. He wrapped his tongue with practice round the spaghetti names and titles of two obscure magnificoes from the European Commission.
He began by giving a short speech – rather against the form of these meetings, it has to be said – in which he radiated optimism about British prospects after our exit from the EU. Yet he went out of his way to be polite about European Commission members. Although ‘a certain amount of plaster’ had fallen off ceilings in Brussels since our EU referendum result, he was sure that the Commission’s grandees would prove ‘faithful servants of Europe’ and ensure that Britain and EU states continued to trade to each other’s benefit.
Borishas learned to step with care through minutiae. He spoke about how we were ‘extricating ourselves from the European Union treaty’(this is subtly but important different from saying we are leaving Europe).
Andrew rosindell (Con, romford) wanted him to fly the Commonwealth flag from Government buildings.
Boris, chuckling at Mr rosindell’s ardour for all things Commonwealth, admitted he hadn’t a clue what the flag looked like. one of the Whitehall officials drew a quick sketch for him. Jolly nice flag, said Boris. But he would not at that instance agree to run it up the flagpole.
And though he had long been a russophile, alive to that country’s amazing culture, he thought the Kremlin’s bombing in syria was outrageous. He was forthright but controlled. it is possible to do the two simultaneously without being a bore. Foreign secretary Boris is doing rather well.