Wallace delicately cradled his cranium as if it were an explosive device… HENRY DEEDES on the downcast Defence Secretary and other lesser-spotted MPs
Poor Ben Wallace. For a moment there it looked as though that Nato secretary general job he was lusting after might provide the perfect evacuation chute.
A chance to escape, a chance to break out of this tired, sclerotic government and on to the international high table to sup with the big boys. Heaven knows he deserves it.
Best of all though, perhaps, a chance to never again have to endure another session of Defence Questions – the ministerial equivalent of a long, sweltering afternoon on the parade ground.
That doddery old fool Joe Biden has apparently put paid to those daydreams. He and Macron want someone from the EU in the job. Far easier for them to deal with a career politico than an ex-army officer. More malleable.
Such a rude snub would certainly have explained why Mr Wallace looked so peeved in the Commons yesterday. His shoulders were slumped, his face arranged in a perma-pained expression.
Poor Ben Wallace. For a moment there it looked as though that Nato secretary general job he was lusting after might provide the perfect evacuation chute (Pictured: Ben Wallace during a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Commission on June 15)
Every now again during a question, he would avert his rheumy eyes heavenwards as if to ask ‘why on earth do I bother?’
Mind you, with some of the dross being spoken it was hard not to sympathise. There was the usual finger-wagging lectures from Tobias Ellwood (Con, Bournemouth E) about army funding.
Mark Francois (Con, Rayleigh) broke into one of his customary claret-faced rants about the ‘abs-sol-ute-ly disgraaaayshfull’ condition of some of the armed forces’ accommodation.
Most groan-inducing of all was a query from Marion Fellows (SNP, Motherwell) who asked how the government could justifying spending £3billion renewing our nuclear weapons when there were people out there using food banks. That sort of level I’m afraid.
Wallace sat, delicately cradling his cranium in his hands as though it were an explosive device in danger of going off. Easy now, gently does it. At one point he accused his opposite number John Healey of selectively quoting him.
At another, he dispatched his procurement minister James Cartlidge to answer a question, presumably in case he lost his rag. Even the disclosure by Veterans Minister Andrew Murrison that he was attending London’s Pride Parade this weekend failed to cheer Wallace’s spirits.
Dr Murrison, FYI, is one of Parliament’s drier biscuits. The idea of him pumping and grinding away on a parade float in his Royal Navy tie is simply too delicious to contemplate.
Mischievous John Spellar (Lab, Warley) sensed Mr Wallace’s irritable mood. ‘It is probably a bit of a shame but, after missing out on the job of secretary general of Nato, the Secretary of State seems to have reverted to “no more Mr Nice Guy” mode today, although it may improve as the day goes on,’ he quipped.
A chance to escape, a chance to break out of this tired, sclerotic government and on to the international high table to sup with the big boys. Heaven knows he deserves it
Spellar chuckled merrily at this own jocularity. Mr Wallace, you may be unsurprised to learn, did not.
Later on, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly came to the House to deliver an update on the weekend’s unnerving events in Russia.
Cleverly is not the zingiest of performers. He tends to chew on his sentences too long and is gratingly prone to repetition.
Of far more interest was the presence of Liz Truss several rows behind him, who was making a rare appearance in the chamber to urge the Government to continue supporting Ukraine.
Good old Liz. She still carries on as if those topsy-turvy couple of months last autumn never happened and does that funny thing with her left arm when she speaks, bobbing it up and down gormlessly while her head wobbles from side to side like one of the Flowerpot men.
Oh and also present: Boris’s Partygate accuser Bernard Jenkin (Naturist Party, Harwich), his first appearance in the chamber since going to ground after he was accused of bending lockdown rules himself.
All the hermits popping out of the woodwork at once. Must be rain coming.
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