Hair neatly preened, Sir Keir’s outrage seemed cosmetic
Teeth flashing, eyebrows arched stiffly like two bows stretched at full twang, in a hot and humid house of Commons Labour’s Sarah Champion was not happy.
She was unleashing a torrent of anger over the Prime Minister’s decision to merge the Department for International Development (Dfid) with the Foreign Office.
It was ‘ incredulous’ that the Government was going down this route, she said. the merger was a ‘hostile takeover’ ridding us of our ‘soft power and international standing’.
the PM, who had been scribbling away distractedly, suddenly became alert to the fury pouring down his ear lugs. he screwed up his eyes into piggy peepholes and fixed his assailant with a baffled stare. turning to his Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, he muttered languidly: ‘Who is this?’
the fact Boris couldn’t recognise the chair of international development committee confirmed that Dfid has never featured much on his radar. there was an undisguised glee yesterday with which he announced its effective abolishment. It was as though he’d finally flogged an overly thirsty motor car.
the PM said it was time to merge Dfid and the Foreign Office’s ambitions, which for too long have pursued different paths. he pointed out the absurdity of us giving the same aid to Ghana as to Ukraine, an important european security ally.
It was time to stop our aid budget being treated like a ‘giant cashpoint in the sky’. It was important we got ‘ maximum value for the taxpayer’, he intoned with a meaty thwack on the despatch box.
the news certainly caught MPs on the hop. that morning they’d assumed Boris was coming to the Commons to prattle on about trade. Sir Keir Starmer, hair neatly preened and oiled, shook his head.
he described the move as ‘the tactics of pure distraction’ as the economic and social horrors of coronavirus pile up on the Government’s doorstep. ‘ It. Will. Not. Work,’ Sir Keir warned, his staccato voice laced with concocted concern.
Starmer has form in being shocked and appalled, but was there something cosmetic about his anger yesterday?
International Development, after all, is hardly an issue they fret over on Labour’s Red Wall.
he’d certainly entered the chamber in decent enough spirits. After catching Dominic Raab’s eye across the chamber, he and the Foreign Secretary were soon chortling away like old university chums.
Others leaders took turns to show off their spray-on indignation. the SNP’s Ian Blackford accused the Government of ‘using a terrible pandemic to rip up UK infrastructure.’ From someone who wants to rip up the UK entirely!
the chamber was reduced to titters when he accused Boris of bluster. Blackford is in no more position to lecture about bluster than he is doling out dietary advice.
Meanwhile, acting Lib Dem leader Sir ed Davey, who had sat through Boris’s statement as though chewing on stinging nettles, described the merger as a ‘massive step backwards’.
BORIS will have been relieved that support from his own side was total. tom tugendhat (Con, tonbridge and Malling), who is no Boris fan, said he was glad the PM ‘had been listening to a few of the things I have said over the last three years’.
Brimming with self-importance, he said that he had spoken to his ‘ opposite numbers’ in Australia and Canada who both warmly endorsed the merger.
tugendhat is chairman of the intelligence and security committee. One might have been forgiven for thinking he was the top ranking spook at MI6.
Former foreign secretary Jeremy hunt said the merger was ‘the right thing to do’. Paul holmes (Con, eastleigh) who looks barely out of short trousers, said the PM had done ‘absolutely the right thing’.
‘Give him a job!’ Someone heckled. Labour’s Chris Bryant, I think. Bryant had already got in a decent barb when Boris inelegantly explained how it was no good the Foreign Office going to a foreign leader ‘urging him not to cut the head off an opponent’ if Dfid was then going to arrive with a cheque for £200million.
‘Is that what we do now?’ Bryant enquired.
the big loser in all this of course is International Development minister Anne Marie trevelyan, who will now be junior to Dominic Raab in the merged department.
She spent the session perched next to her new boss, laughing and joshing merrily. All smiles, you might say. Wonder how long that’ll last?