It’s like eunuchs moaning over cost of Viagra
WE BEGIN with the following warning: Reading this parliamentary sketch may imperil national security. If you mention its contents to anyone from Russia, you may be in jolly hot water.
Yesterday the Commons discussed a Trident misfire from the Royal Navy nuclear submarine Vengeance. Not that it was a misfire. Everything was absolutely in order. Nothing to see here. Carry on, Chief Petty Officer. As you were.
Defence Secretary Michael Fallon broke the parliamentary surface at 1530 hours to answer an Urgent Question from Kevan Jones (Lab, N Durham). Up sprang Jacob ReesMogg (Con, NE Somerset) to propose that the House sit in private. This would have entailed evicting all members of the public (including journalists). Mr ReesMogg thought careless talk might ‘give succour to Her Majesty’s enemies’. His suggestion was not carried.
Mr Jones, like others, had spotted a story in the Sunday papers about a monoclepopping moment in the seas near Florida in the closing days of the Cameron era. If the story was correct – WHICH IT IS NOT!! – the matelots in Vengeance pressed their red button in a rare Trident test. The rocket zoomed into the air. So far, so good.
Then the naval observers had to move their binoculars in an unexpected direction. The Trident, instead of heading east towards a harmless target zone in the midAtlantic, took a turn westwards. Eek! It was fizzing towards Disneyland, or something like that. If swift action had not been taken, Mickey Mouse might have received a nasty surprise up his backside.
Mr Fallon, coating his larynx with creaky worldweariness, said ‘reports in the weekend press’ were not wholly to be believed. Trident’s effectiveness was ‘not in doubt’.
THERE had been a ‘routine’ testing of the Trident system and subsystem, a ‘demonstration and shakedown’. Vengeance had been ‘successfully tested and certified as ready’ for action. More than that, he would not say.
Labour MPs demanded to know if Theresa May had known about the misfire/nonmisfire when the Commons voted in July to renew Trident. Mr Fallon would not say. But he did assure us that health and safety was of paramount concern to the Ministry of Defence. Shades, here, of that line in the film Dr Strangelove: ‘Gentlemen, you can’t fight here, this is the war room’.
Labour’s defence spokesman, Nia Griffith, who has all the naval saltiness of Mary Poppins, said ‘all we want is clarity and transparency’. Mr Fallon said he did not believe in transparency when it came to nuclear weapons. ‘Not good enough!’ cried Labour and SNP voices (the latter were out in force, not being as riven on nuclear weapons as Labour, which still has MPs who believe in the principle of deterrence). Mr Fallon steamed on regardless. He was amazingly bulletproof.
Julian Lewis, Tory chairman of the Commons defence select committee, said ‘once stories get out there, isn’t it better to be quite frank?’
Mr Fallon gave a single blink of the eyes and disagreed. Time and again he dropped periscope and sent up a few bubbles about how Vengeance had been ‘certified again to join the operational cycle’. George Osborne (Con, Tatton) watched all this with a smile.
Michael Gove (Con, Surrey Heath) thought it absurd for Opposition unilateral disarmers to wail that the credibility of the nuclear deterrent might have been affected. It was ‘like eunuchs complaining about the cost of Viagra’.
Speaker Bercow, who for some reason dislikes Mr Gove and had initially summoned him with the patronising words ‘ah, young Gove’, commented sarcastically on this contribution. ‘I’m sure it went down very well at the Oxford Union,’ sneered Bercow. Mr Gove: ‘I’m sorry you’re jealous, Mr Speaker.’ No question of a misfire there.
Labour’s Kevin Brennan (Cardiff W) said Mr Fallon was adopting a ‘name, rank, serial number, don’ttell’emPike’ approach, while on the other side of the Atlantic, at that very moment, the US government was happily giving reporters much greater detail about the incident. Traitors!