One hesitates to do the Kremlin’s dirty work but London’s response to the Russian maritime threat would make a Siberian tiger laugh.
Russian spy ship Yantar, with a full complement of knobbly-headed Ivans, was spotted north of Scotland this week. It was said to be scanning our seabeds for cables so that if V. Putin declares war, he will know which power and internet lines his frogmen should snip.
This startling development was first reported by the Defence Secretary, John Healey, in a Downing Street speech on Wednesday. It went little noticed for two reasons. First, Mr Healey is unexciting.
Moscow intelligence operatives, listening to his speech from Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square, were found slumped at their monitors.
For a moment it was feared they had been sedated by some cunning MI6 device, maybe gaseous. Almost right. Doctors later confirmed the observers had been rendered comatose by Mr Healey’s rhetoric.
The second reason the spy-ship story did not gain much attention was that everyone was more gripped by the appearance of a Mancunian vessel, the coal-smoke-belching ‘Andy Burnham’, off the coast of Westminster.
This rustbucket is said to be surveying the briny depths of the parliamentary Labour party to gauge how vulnerable Sir Keir Starmer is to attack.
Doctors later confirmed the observers had been rendered comatose by Mr Healey’s (pictured) rhetoric (file image)
Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary, also came to the House to make another of her immigration statements
Yesterday, a defence minister, Al Carns, was dragged to the Commons to tell MPs what was going on with the Yantar affair. Speaker Hoyle took a salty swipe at the Ministry of Defence for neglecting the Commons.
Mr Carns, formerly of the Royal Marines, was non-plussed by this broadside. You would have thought a naval man might have been better prepared. But Mr Carns is not much cop at this parliament ‘game’ (as he called it).
He may have been awarded the Military Cross for his time in uniform but at the despatch box he mumbles into his blond designer stubble.
After well over a year as a minister he has not mastered the customs of the House. He sounds more robotic than you would hope from a former Marines colonel. A disappointing lump of beefcake.
Not many MPs had gathered to hear about the Russian outrage. The Yantar had tried to deter an RAF anti-submarine P8 aircraft by shining a laser beam at its crew.
Mr Carns did his best to sound macho as he said that ‘Russia wants to operate in this veil of darkness but we know exactly what they are up to’.
And what were we going to do about it? Mr Carns inhaled until his chest was jolly big. ‘We are going to expose and attribute,’ he said. ‘Expose and attribute. Expose and attribute.’
Had the Russia ambassador been summoned by the Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, so that she would wobble that head at him and shout at him with her knitting-needle of a voice? He had not. Mr Carns just said ‘expose and attribute’ one more time.
As it happens, the new minister in charge of maritime affairs, Keir Mather, was on display earlier at transport questions. Peachy-cheeked little fella. Looks about 14. Pinewood casting directors would swoop on him to play a midshipman in the next Hornblower dramatisation.
Mr Mather sat on the front bench beside his secretary of state, Heidi Alexander. She could have been a mother escorting her child to school on the bus.
Another minister, Lilian Greenwood, brought the joyous news that £300million is to be spent on ‘active travel’. In essence, walking.
The money would go to things such as ‘the delivery of high-quality of pavements to enable more people to walk’. She would soon publish her ‘next steps’ on pavement policy. Might the money not be spent more wisely on buying a few torpedoes to shoot at Russian spy ships?
Shabana Mahmood, Home Secretary, also came to the House to make another of her immigration statements.
I find myself shocked to report she did not swear. With little Keir Mather around, you do worry about safeguarding procedures when effer-and-blinder Shabana is nearby.