The PM sounds positively dove-like in a seemingly hawkish Parliament
It’s good to know that with Covid over, Parliament can get back to debating normal things like World War Three. Vladimir Putin has invaded Ukraine, with scant regard for carbon footprint, so Boris Johnson marched into the Commons, as the world’s pre-eminent hawk, to tell us how we’re going to put Vlad back in his box.
Yet the sanctions he announced were so narrow that he started to sound like a dove.
The PM named five banks and three friends of the dictator, called Gennady, Boris and Igor – and while it’s funny to discover that Vlad has a crony called Igor (“Bring me a fresh brain, Igor” – “Yessss, master”), the House agreed it was pretty weak beer.
Labour tore off its shirt and demanded vodka shots.
“A threshold has already been breached,” said Sir Keir Starmer – we need a “full set of sanctions now”, an end to “oligarchic immunity” and to take Russia Today off the air. Seven years ago, a man running for Labour leader appeared on Russia Today; the current Labour leader wants to ban it. The PM welcomed the opposition’s change in tone from pacifist to realist, triggering a wave of indignation on the Labour backbenches – but Sir Keir nodded. And his frontbench, seeing him nod, nodded also.
Jeremy Corbyn said nothing.
The anti-war crowd thinks there’s no point calling for calm, they’d only be jeered, but without a single voice of dissent, MPS got whipped up, Rambostyle, convincing themselves we need to hit them “hard and hit them now” (Iain Duncan Smith). Even the Greens. Even Plaid. Wales could be next!
Lib Dem leader Ed Davey proposed a three-point plan to kick out the kleptocrats, protect troop numbers and “no longer tolerate” sporting events in Russia – Davey is liberal the way Russia is democratic – and from the depths of the Tory subconscious one spied the stirrings of a war caucus.
“We will have to ensure either that Ukraine is given the means to defend itself... or given some sort of security guarantee,” said Liam Fox. We might need a “no fly zone”, said Tobias Ellwood. What we need, I think, is to broadcast a series of Chekhov plays on BBC One, to educate the public that Putin doesn’t speak for all of Russia.
Did the PM not play tennis with rich Russians, asked Labour’s Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi? Nickie Aiken, a Conservative, suggested that the children of people connected to Moscow “should be perhaps sent home and not be allowed to benefit from the education within this country”.
We don’t punish children for the sins of their fathers, said the PM, and he warned Dhesi against “casual Russophobia”, a welcome statement because having endured two years of paranoia and intolerance, it would be awful if Covid gave way to war fever and prejudice. Nevertheless, perhaps detecting the mood of the House, maybe the country, Boris hammered home that harsher sanctions will follow a further invasion. Whether they work or not depends on the mood Putin is in.
He seems pretty “illogical and irrational” at the moment, observed the PM.
Which is diplo-speak for “completely bananas”.