The phone sounded far more energised than him
WITH Theresa May possibly going limp on Brexit (by taking dictation, it is rumoured, from her civil servant and would-be Cabinet Secretary Oliver Robbins), eyes turn to replacement Tory leaders.
Don’t blame the media or MPs for this speculation. It is Mrs May’s fault. If she wetly aims for a non-event Brexit, the party will probably seek to unite under someone clearer, zestier, more optimistic and most of all for someone who is prepared, with linguistic flourishes, to tell the Europeans to get stuffed.
Could that person be Gavin Williamson, at present Defence Secretary? He fancies himself a tough guy. He has, to his credit, rebadged himself a Eurosceptic. He is youthful. Has great hair. Comes from t’North.
Less usefully, he has the most toneless, soporific voice (worse than the adolescent William Hague), lacks fluency, cannot radiate seriousness and is nicknamed ‘Private Pike’ by Philip Hammond’s Treasury.
Though once a Chief Whip, Mr Williamson is not feared. Tory backbencher Johnny Mercer (Plymouth Moor View) gave him a fearful tonking in a speech at a think-tank yesterday. Mr Mercer is ex-Army. Without much battlefield coding, he referred to Mr Williamson’s recent lobbying of Downing Street for more defence spending as ‘frankly embarassing for all concerned’.
Early yesterday afternoon Mr Williamson came to an underfilled Commons to tell MPs the latest on the fight against Iraq/Syria jihadist group Daesh. The military strategy itself seems to have been a rare success. MPs heard that 98 per cent of the territory formerly occupied by Daesh has been liberated.
Not that Mr Williamson managed to convey much sense of mature pleasure about this. A more cheerless tone you would struggle to find.
Some say he has been having voice- coaching to lower and slow his delivery. It is hard to believe any serious politician would really resort to voice-coaching but Mrs Thatcher did. Does Mr Williamson fancy himself the new Maggie?
Alas, he is accident-prone. He was nearing the end of his opening remarks at the Commons despatch box yesterday when his mobile telephone was activated by mention of ‘Syria’. The blasted thing started speaking to him in a metallic voice which turned out to be Siri, a computerised internet search device. The machine sounded a lot more energised than Mr Williamson did. ‘What a very rum business,’ said Speaker Bercow. Mr Williamson, blushing, struggled to locate the still-squawking telephone – he finally found it in one of his inner breast pockets – and switched it off.
‘It’s not every day that’s you’re heckled by your own mobile phone,’ he admitted. This created a minor stir of amusement and it gave the small number of us in the Press gallery something to write in our notebooks. But it only added to the impression that Mr Williamson – whose performance in the House was littered with stumbled misreadings and ‘y’knows’ and repetitions – was a dud.
How could Mrs May ever have made him Defence Secretary? The Ministry of Defence is not just in trouble owing to lack of funds. It needs much stronger ministers. At least two of the current team under Mr Williamson are sub-par.
EARLIER, at Treasury Questions, we had seen Mr Hammond. He seemed even more pleased with himself than usual. Does he sense that he and his Remainers have seen off Boris Johnson in the coming Cabinet discussion about our future customs arrangements with the EU?
It is a measure of politicians’ lack of self-knowledge that at one point Mr Hammond accused the Labour party of being ‘doom-mongers’. This from a Chancellor who has occasionally made Mrs May look like a corset-spurning flapper.
Mr Hammond sat there blithely while one of his junior ministers, Mel Stride, signalled that petrol taxes may well rise at the next Budget. ‘We will, of course, be looking at everyone paying a little more,’ said Mr Stride. Have there ever been two more depressing words than that ‘of course’.
Life under the May s-Hammond sRobbins es of this world. Tell me: why bother to vote Conservative?