Upstairs sat Attorney General Lord Hermer, true leader of our government.
International law’s plump magnifico perched silently in the peers’ gallery, something feline in his precise posture. Below him, at the despatch box, stood his unhappy pupil.
The moment Sir Keir Starmer entered the Commons it was noticeable how furrowed his forehead was. Three lines crossed his brow. First time I’ve noticed them.
War tends to cool the hecklers and ya-booers. Sure enough, silence cloaked the House as a flunkey installed a raised platform to make Sir Keir’s notes easier for his tired eyes.
The PM, on his feet for two hours, emphasised that our forces were taking no part in ‘offensive’ strikes. His very opening assertion: ‘The United Kingdom was not involved in the initial strikes.’
Disgust rippled across the dark-suited Conservative benches. ‘Shame!’ shouted one Opposition MP.
But Sir Edward Leigh (Con, Gainsborough), a veteran opponent of Middle East military sallies, leaned back and picked his teeth. Sir Keir had his support, at least.
When the PM suggested that the solution to the crisis was for Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions, many Tories seemed to think him naive. But Sir Edward was content with that.
The PM’s tone was flat, clerical, dispassionate to the point of bloodless. Sir Andrew Mitchell (Con, Sutton Coldfield), who seldom likes to attack a prime minister, called him ‘anaemic and disappointing’. Tories are more accustomed to British premiers inhaling the cordite of battle and firing off a few rhetorical salvoes.
Sir Keir avoided any adjective or phrase that could be construed as stirring. He was no more belligerent than the speaking clock. Piglet in a perturbation. Behind him sat his parliamentary private secretary, in a glaringly yellow dress.
Sir Keir prattled about travel advice. He was pleased we were doing no more than Germany and France. His tone was entirely defensive, alighting on reasons not to do things.
He kept mentioning the law, the law, the law. ‘The law is what it is,’ he averred. But who sets that law, if law it correctly be? How democratically accountable is any international court?
Sir Andrew noted that the shadow Attorney, Lord Wolfson, had reached a different conclusion from that of M’Lud Hermer. A Labour voice snapped: ‘Wrong lawyer!’
Is that what it boils down to: one lawyer’s opinion? Sir Keir said he had not read Lord Wolfson’s legal opinion. Time and again, like a child who had baked its first batch of fairy cakes, he boasted about having made two decisions.
He was jolly proud of himself, even if they had, naturally, been contradictory. First he refused to let the Americans use our air bases. Then, once our lads in Cyprus came under attack, he changed his mind. Conservatives repeatedly asked if that meant Iran could now be bombed legally? Sir Keir would not utter those words.
He just peered at the benches opposite through the horizontal frame of his slightly smudged spectacles.
Sir Ed Davey, bloodthirsty commander of the Lib Dem crack troops, focused his fire on ‘tax exiles and washed-up old footballers’ who were now coming under Iranian bombardment in Dubai.
Sir Ed named one of them, the fiancee of Richard Tice (Ref, Boston). Mr Tice shouted that Sir Ed was ‘pathetic and cowardly’. Given the pugnacious reputation of Mr Tice’s sweetheart, it might have been more accurate to call Sir Ed a foolhardy maniac.
John Healey, Defence Secretary, was sitting near Sir Keir and passed a slip of paper up the back-benches to young Uma Kumaran (Lab, Stratford & Bow). T
en minutes later Ms Kumaran asked Sir Keir a decidedly soft question, reading it off that same piece of paper.
Yasmin Qureshi (Lab, Bolton S) made numerous squawks supportive of Sir Keir. Other Labour MPs were broadly supportive of the Government – as indeed was Jeremy Corbyn (Ind, Islington N) – but there was little vocal enthusiasm for Sir Keir. It is hard to cheer a dithery blinker.
