Why was Boris Johnson so cheerful yesterday? The Foreign Secretary was markedly upbeat during an hour of Commons questions to his department.
Gone was that slightly dry-snouted, beagle-eyed Boris we saw earlier in the month when the Establishment was ganging up on him over his Iran prisoner slip.
Instead we saw a man determined to look on the bright side of life. Maybe he has been getting some sleep and eating better. Maybe he was buoyed by Monday night’s Commons vote on us leaving the EU’s Customs Union, which the Government won by a stonking 311 to 76 (Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell voted with the Government).
Perhaps Boris Johnson has simply remembered that optimism is life’s best medicine and his natural strong-suit
Maybe the German crisis has made Mr Johnson feel less got-at by life – on the basis that London’s Government may have its problems but Berlin does not even have a government.
Or maybe he has simply remembered that optimism is life’s best medicine and his natural strong-suit.The Foreign Office ministerial team in the Commons yesterday, in order of seating, was as follows: Rory Stewart, Boris, Sir Alan Duncan, Alistair Burt.
Messrs Stewart and Burt answered questions without making reference to notes. They just stood at the despatch box and ad-libbed. The more senior Boris and Sir Alan preferred to hold on to their official files.
Sir Alan has lost some of his merriment of old. Since the EU referendum he has often looked rather cheesed-off, his mouth forming a downward crescent and a clipped tone entering his voice.
Sir Alan Duncan and Boris seemed ‘to rub along happily enough’ despite being on opposite sides of the EU referendum
He was a stern opponent of the Leave campaign which was led with such gusto by the man who is now his Secretary of State. Yet Boris is not a person to glower. Though he must be aware that Sir Alan can be a prickly cactus, he declines to give him the satisfaction of being treated badly. Yesterday the two men appeared to rub along happily enough.
The usual dacoits lurked in the Chamber’s byways. At the far end of the House sat Europhile Tom Tugendhat (Con, Tonbridge & Malling), chairman of the foreign affairs select committee and an unamused critic of Boris’s efforts to cheer up the British electorate.
Mr Tugendhat, 44 going on 60, sat in the place normally occupied by Eurosceptic Jacob Rees-Mogg. He stayed long enough to ask a scratchy question about British policy on Iran – ‘there is none!’
Mr Burt was stung by this and firmly replied that the Government’s policy on Iran was ‘actually very clear’. Mr Tugendhat fumed. By just over half-way through the session, however, he had gone.
For once Emily Thornberry didn’t ask the Foreign Secretary to resign, though she ‘banged on about the Irish border’
Opposite Boris, rigid with her customary froideur, brooded his shadow, Emily Thornberry. She has so often called for Boris to resign that it is nowadays a surprise when she does not do that. Yesterday she banged on about the Irish border and demanded to know if Boris would quit if the matter was not settled to his satisfaction.
Miss Thornberry had by this point been told to get a move on by Speaker Bercow and her peroration was thus rather ruined. The House took little notice of it and several MPs cheered sarcastically when it realised that she had again sought Boris’s departure from Government.
Another moment of note came when Robert Jenrick (Con, Newark) lamented Britain’s failure to secure a judge on the UN’s International Court of Justice. London’s legal illuminati are gravely offended by this. No doubt several career paths have been wrecked.
Mr Jenrick, himself a lawyer, went in sharper than expected, saying it reflected ‘a major failure for British judiciary’ (and therefore, by implication, for British diplomacy). Boris, who had already been asked about it by a Scots Nat, replied with a smile that he congratulated India on getting its candidate elected to the court at our expense.
Be big in defeat. It’s a lesson Remainers could learn. But Mr Jenrick shook his head and did not look impressed by Boris’s attitude. It can be observed that Mr Jenrick is parliamentary aide to the Home Secretary, Amber Rudd.