Fancy rockets, gleaming frigates, state-of-the-art new gear – usually when the Prime Minister discusses military matters, his speeches hum with the excitable rat-a-tat of gunfire and climax with a loud ‘kaboom’!
Boris Johnson’s Integrated Review of defence and foreign policy yesterday, though, was a disappointingly soggy biscuit. Damper than an otter’s pocket.
Plenty about increasing our already bulging nuclear stockpile (why?) but little by way of explosion.
In fact, the only mushroom cloud threatening to go off was the PM’s combustible mood. He was in a right old grump!
Repeatedly we were told this was the biggest defence shake-up since the Cold War. So where was the gung-ho Johnson esprit de corps to match?
Boris Johnson’s Integrated Review of defence and foreign policy yesterday, though, was a disappointingly soggy biscuit. Damper than an otter’s pocket
All we got were moistened expectations – and told we would have to ‘relearn the art’ of competing against countries ‘with opposing values’.
As for the looming threat from China, the PM insisted we would continue to work with the Chinese when it was ‘consistent with our values and interests’. Dear me, what a sorry surrender.
Sir Keir Starmer waited his turn nervously. Understandable. He’s about as woolly on defence as a Polish carpenter on the laws of rugby league.
He began by offering macho support for our nuclear deterrent but queried why we were reneging on a commitment to reduce our warheads.
Boris quickly reminded everyone how Starmer once stood on the manifesto drawn up by Jeremy Corbyn and his sandal-wearing peaceniks.
If he’d had his way, our servicemen would have been armed with nothing more lethal than pea shooters and the odd slingshot.
Sir Keir Starmer waited his turn nervously. Understandable. He’s about as woolly on defence as a Polish carpenter on the laws of rugby league.
But next to Sir Keir perched his foreign affairs spokesman, Lisa Nandy, who enjoys a noisy session.
There was a constant squawk from her facemask whenever the PM spoke. Would Miss Nandy have offered a more muscular response than her boss?
Some think she’d do a better job than him full-stop – as does she, I suspect.
The PM’s mood certainly wasn’t buoyed when his backbenchers started chipping in. They weren’t happy about his lily-livered language towards China.
Tobias Ellwood (Con, Bournemouth E) thought the review missed an opportunity to ‘call out China for the strategic threat that it is’.
The intelligence and security committee’s serpentine chairman Julian Lewis (Con, New Forest E) went further, decrying that the Government’s softly-softly approach toward Beijing showed that the ‘grasping naivety of the Cameron/Osborne years lingers on’. Oof! Boris won’t have enjoyed that.
More from Henry Deedes for the Daily Mail…
Foreign affairs committee chairman Tom Tugendhat (Con, Tonbridge) appeared to take credit for many of the spending proposals included in the review.
There sounds a man who was never missing when the medals were being doled out. Other Tories fretted over the reduction in international aid.
Father of the House Sir Peter Bottomley (Con, Worthing W), oozing the misplaced self-importance of a ceremonial High Sheriff, urged a rethink.
But Boris huffed and puffed, occasionally whacking the despatch box as if to say, ‘thanks a bunch, you lot’.
And when preening Peter Kyle (Lab, Hove) claimed aid cuts would lead to a swarm of illegal immigration, trails of hot steam appeared to shoot from the PM’s lugholes. ‘He’s talking nonsense,’ he spluttered.
All this made me slightly worry when Chris Bryant (Lab, Rhondda) rose to complain the review didn’t do enough to address the influx of dirty Russian money flowing through London.
Mr Bryant is the wasp at the first summer picnic hovering over the bottle of rosé. His buzzing presence can provoke even the most mild-mannered minister to lash out rashly.
Boris angrily accused Bryant of sitting ‘like a squatting Buddha’ whenever Agent Corbyn endorsed lines fed by the Kremlin in the chamber.
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle sprang to his feet. ‘Er, I do think we need to be careful about what allegations we are making,’ he stuttered nervously. Boris bashfully reeled in his neck.
After a testing 90 minutes, a nightcap and an early night ahead of today’s PMQs might have been in order.