Blackford goes blank as PM takes the piscine with El Dorado dream
MUCH to Boris Johnson’s delight, Ian Blackford disappeared in the middle of asking questions in the House of Commons yesterday.
The SNP’S Westminster leader was appearing remotely (Westminster being remote from Skye) when, suddenly, he disappeared, possibly having blown a fuse after the Prime Minister had once again referred, with quite uncanny wit, to “the Scottish Nationalist (sic) Party”.
A few minutes earlier, Mr Blackford had welcomed the presidency of Joe Biden in yonder United States and reminded the House that Mr Johnson had “cosied up to Donald Trump and his callous worldview”. Never a good idea to cosy up to Donald’s calluses.
The PM explained that cosying up to American presidents was “part of the job description”, and proceeded to outline how he would go about this with the latest incumbent: “Mr
Speaker, we’ll work with President Biden to secure the transatlantic alliance and Nato which, of course, the Scottish Nationalist (sic) Party would unbundle. Well, I think they would. I don’t know what their policy is on our armed services. I think they would break them up, though perhaps he would like to explain.”
But before Mr Blackford had the chance, and just after the Speaker had reproved Mr Johnson for his “memory lapse” regarding the Scottish National (not sic) Party, the SNP man disappeared from our screens. Instead, as the Speaker called on him, the arguably more feminine image of Tory member Nicola Richards appeared instead, to much laughter.
Alas, Ms Richards had no more luck than Mr Blackford. After a few seconds of her best impersonation of Marcel Marceau, the Speaker advised: “Nicola, you’re muted. Press the mic.”
Ms Richards: “I’m not muted. Can you hear me?” Speaker: “Speak! Get the question in. The Prime Minister’s desperate.” Yes, isn’t he? Alas, Ms Richards faded back into the ether, still desperately crying, “Can you hear me?”, which is pretty much what Mr Blackford would be as well asking the PM every week.
Incidentally, yesterday’s session was marred by a series of remote technological issues, with gadgets trilling and beeping, and one member struggling – and failing – to switch off a ringing phone. I think the idea that the much-loved British national pantomime might continue in this vein, after Covid-19, is losing its lustre.
Meanwhile, we had found Mr Blackford again, bouncing back into our laps with a question asking Mr Johnson to denounce Chinese persecution of the Uyghur people as “genocide”. The PM replied that, while the oppression was “abhorrent”, the attribution of genocide was “a judicial matter”.
Then he couldn’t help himself (again): “What I might ask him, in all sincerity (sic), is what he would propose by way of a Scottish national – or not nationalist but national (God, he was all over the place now) – foreign policy? Would he … break up the FCDO [Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office] which, after all, has a big branch in East Kilbride?”
Alas, Mr Blackford never got the chance to reply and, if he’d any sense, went instead for a long walk on a wonderfully sunny Skye yesterday. Earlier, talking of matters meteorological, Mr Johnson described Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s contributions in recent months as being like “watching a weather vane spin round and round, depending on where the breezes are blowing”.
Meanwhile, asked by Labour’s Ben Bradshaw about the cold breezes blowing around the fishing fleet, Mr Johnson admitted there had been problems with “form-filling” and lack of demand from Covid-closed restaurants in Europe. However, he assured Britain’s fishermen of an “El Dorado” by 2026. El Dorado? That was a myth, wasn’t it?
Yesterday’s session was marred by a series of technological issues