Rishi Sunak rose at 15.37 on Monday afternoon to deliver his statement on Iran and Israel, and at once confirmed that during the attack by Iran on Israel on Saturday evening British forces “destroyed a number of Iranian drones”.
The Prime Minister’s reference to this achievement by the gallant pilots of the RAF was delivered with such a marked lack of brio that he induced torpor, or at best a respectful boredom, in his listeners, seen in the faces of the ministerial colleagues lined up on the Treasury Bench to support him.
Undramatic presentation is Sunak’s way of de-escalating the situation, which is what dozens of MPs on both sides of the Chamber say is now required. He does not share the urge of his predecessor but one, Boris Johnson, to be vivid, forceful, imaginative and amusing about the great questions of the day.
“We want to see calmer heads prevail,” Sunak said, and “prevent further escalation”. He is by nature a de-escalator, a man of calm good sense.
But he also said he would be speaking that evening by telephone to his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Could a call from Downing Street turn Netanyahu into a de-escalatory kind of a guy? One slightly doubted it would have that effect on him.
But the resources of British diplomacy were not exhausted. Lord Cameron had already revealed, on that morning’s air waves, the line he will be putting to the Israeli Government: “Now’s a time to be smart as well as tough.”
“Now’s a time to be stupid as well as feeble” would not have the same ring.
Sir Keir Starmer, replying to Sunak, agreed that “escalation is not inevitable”. Israel had shown “strength and courage” in its defence against the Iranian attack, and “must show the same strength and courage to de-escalate”.
Turning to Gaza, a subject which deeply troubles many Labour MPs and voters, Starmer called on the Government to “use every ounce of diplomatic leverage that we have have to ensure…that aid is drastically scaled up”.
“As the Foreign Secretary said this morning,” Sunak reminded us in his reply, “this is a time to be smart as well as tough”.
Even those of us who had been braced for the ordeal which lay ahead by April showers on our way to Westminster, our umbrellas blown inside out, felt on hearing this an almost irresistible urge to go to sleep.
When we awoke, we were confident that MPs would still be calling for de-escalation. That is the trouble with these difficult foreign affairs questions, where one can find oneself denounced as a criminal if one deviates for a moment from received ideas.
Politicians who want to keep out of trouble latch on to some consensual word and repeat it over and over again. In this case, the PM wanted to keep out of trouble, so had decided to be as unoriginal as almost everyone else.
But a few politicians who do not expect to hold high office again were more outspoken.
Sir Liam Fox, a former Defence Secretary, wished to know why, when an Iranian journalist has just been attacked on British soil, Iran Air is still operating out of Heathrow, and Iranian banks are still operating in the City of London.
Ben Wallace, until recently Defence Secretary, pointed out that another country “is under almost constant daily bombardment by Iranian-made drones”, namely Ukraine, and went on:
“Some three years ago I pleaded with the Israelis to help Ukraine against Russia, and they refused even though Russia was spending half a billion dollars in the Iranian drone programme. I know the Prime Minister will be speaking to the Prime Minister of Israel later today; now that RAF pilots have quite rightly gone to the defence of Israel, could he perhaps ask that Israel now decides it is time to help Ukraine in its hour of need, and we can see off both Russia and Iranian aggression?”
The Prime Minister did not accede to Wallace’s suggestion, but said he would be urging all our allies to do more to support Ukraine, and remarked on the 10,000 “uncrewed platforms” which the UK is delivering to the Ukrainians.
George Galloway, victor in the recent Rochdale by-election, sat along with Lee Anderson, Jeremy Corbyn and Claudia Webbe in the far corner of the Opposition benches where rebels and misfits gather.
We were at length treated to a few moments of rhetoric from Galloway. He wished to know why there was “not one single word in the Prime Minister’s statement of condemnation for the Israeli destruction of the Iranian consulate in Damascus”.
Sunak replied that whatever might have happened a few weeks ago, “it was absolutely no justification for launching more than 300 drones and missiles from one sovereign state towards Israel”.
Every MP who wished to ask the Prime Minister a question was allowed to do so. He was kept there until 17.25, when he left the Chamber with the grin on his face of a schoolboy who has at last been released from an appallingly dull lesson.