’Twas the fortnight before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. Apart from a few exceptions. The Labour backbencher Matt Western had managed to secure an urgent question on President Trump’s new national security strategy and the Commons itself was remarkable for its absences. A roll-call of dishonour.
Take Nigel Farage. You would have thought he would have had a lot to say on the subject. After all, when Barack Obama had intervened in the Brexit referendum campaign to say the UK would be at the back of the queue for any trade deal with the US, Nige had been outraged. How dare the president try to interfere with the democratic processes of another sovereign country? So now that Donald Trump was threatening to do much the same thing in countries all across Europe, surely this was the time for Nige to make a stand. This was surely a point of principle for him. Were he to have any.
That’s not all. You’d also expect Farage to have a thing or two to say about The Donald’s admiration for all things Russia. A possible sellout of Ukraine. Because Nige has always got very angry when people point out that, back in 2014, he had said that Ukraine had got what was coming when Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea. The Ukrainians should never have expressed a desire to join Nato. I never meant to say that, he sobbed. The words had just come out wrong. And as for Nathan Gill, the former Reform leader in Wales, getting a 10-year stretch for taking money from the Russians, Nige had been shocked – SHOCKED – that a close associate could have done such a thing. Here was a moment of redemption.
Then there was the explicit racism of Trump’s security strategy. The charming predictions of “civilisational erasure”. A known rightwing racist trope. The wrong sort of people gaining ascendancy. Brown and black people. Now we know that Nige finds all racism abhorrent. We know it, because he has said so frequently in the last few weeks. Especially when confronted with the evidence of 28 boys with whom he was at school. They must all have slipped down a wormhole where their memories had been erased, he said. And besides, what’s wrong with a bit of banter? Make your mind up, Nige.
So for all these reasons, you’d have expected Farage to bust a gut to get to the Commons. To stand up for democracy and his own integrity. But he was nowhere to be seen. Now to be fair, it’s possible he had important constituency business in Clacton – there’s a first time for everything – but surely he might have sent along one of his trusty sidekicks. Dicky, Lee, Danny or Sarah. But no. Not one of them bothered to show their faces. When it’s a president whose favours you crave, then all bets are off. When it comes to the national interest or the personal interest, the latter wins hands down.
Reform wasn’t alone in its cowardice. Kemi Badenoch, that proud defender of British democracy, was also nowhere to be seen. Nor indeed were any of her shadow cabinet. Instead it was left to Mike Wood, a shadow junior minister of such little importance that even he doesn’t have a clue what his job is meant to be, to speak for the Tory party.
In what may well be a first and last outing at the dispatch box for an urgent question, Mike managed to completely miss the point. At first he didn’t even seem to have grasped that the question was about the US security strategy. Instead he waffled on about the Tories promising to increase defence spending to 3%. No wonder the few MPs that were in the chamber looked baffled. And then when he did get to the strategy, he offered the remarkable observation that it was really all about China. People who were concerned about Russia were being neurotically conspiratorial. Almost as though the Tories were also going out of their way to appease The Donald.
Not to be left out, the Labour frontbench were also guilty of being absent without leave. Western’s urgent question had originally been directed at the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, but Darren Jones was nowhere to be seen. So the short straw went to Seema Malhotra, the lowest-ranked minister in the Foreign Office, to do the honours for the government. She looked miserable throughout.
Malhotra began by saying the US-UK relationship was tickety-boo. There were lots of really good, exciting things to be found in the US strategy. The Donald was an amazing guy. Ravishingly good looking and the sharpest mind on the planet. He and Keir Starmer were the perfect pairing.
Then a few caveats. All done in a mumble. Hoping that no one in the US embassy was listening and would report back to the president. We did have a slightly different perspective on some things, she said almost inaudibly. But then again, too few to mention. It took a while but after a bit of pressing, she got round to saying that Sadiq Khan was doing a decent job. Though the president hadn’t in any way been racist in calling him a horrible, disgusting man. Would this do? Could she sit down now?
It was left to Western himself, with contributions from the Labour MPs Chi Onwurah, Liam Byrne and the Lib Dems Calum Miller and Bobby Dean to get to the heart of the matter: there was nothing remotely normal about the US security strategy. It was all there in black and white. A threat to destabilise European democracies. Support for far-right nationalists. Withdrawal from Nato. Support for Russia. It was a moment of existential crisis for Europe. It was time to wake up. When the US president says this stuff, you had better believe him. Just choosing to ignore it all, hoping things will work out if you don’t rock the boat was an abrogation of responsibility.
At times like this, it feels as if some of our politicians are sleepwalking to disaster.
The Bonfire of the Insanities by John Crace (Guardian Faber Publishing, £16.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
