It could have been a rather lonely outing for Jeremy Hunt. With Mark Field suspended after grabbing an Extinction Rebellion protester by the neck and Alan Duncan having chosen to jump before he was pushed, the Foreign Office is currently running a skeleton staff of junior ministers.
It’s also possible that, come Wednesday evening, Boris Johnson will choose to punish Hunt for having the temerity to stand against him in the leadership contest by elbowing him out of a job. At which point the Foreign Office will be staffed by almost no ministers who have any idea what they are doing. Just as well we’re not on the brink of war with Iran, then.
But for the time being at least, Hunt is still – more or less – foreign secretary, and for what could prove to be his last outing on the government front benches, he was joined by cabinet ministers Amber Rudd, Liam Fox and Penny Mordaunt. He looked suitably grateful, but was probably thinking he’d have preferred them to give him that moral support a week or so ago at one of the Tory leadership debates.
Back then Johnson had had Dominic Raab, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel to massage his ego and tell anyone who would listen how marvellous he was, while poor old Jeremy had struggled to get Steve Brine: an MP who is generally far too nice to lower himself to such insincerity.
Hunt was in the Commons to give a statement on the seizure last Friday of the British-owned tanker, Stena Impero, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. An act that had come as no surprise to anyone after the UK had seized an Iranian tanker in Gibraltar two weeks previously with oil destined for Syria.
No surprise to anyone, that is, except for the entire Conservative party, which had fondly imagined that the rest of the world would suspend everything it was doing while it indulged itself with a six-week Boris-inspired onanism spree.
Seizing a tanker just wasn’t on, Hunt insisted. And to do so during a Tory leadership contest was completely below the belt – something only a deeply untrustworthy country would do. But now someone had told him about the tanker, he was determined to do something. First, he was going to tell the Iranians that he was very, very cross with them.
Next he was happy to report that the Department for Transport had upgraded the security threat level in the strait of Hormuz. Something that might have been done a fortnight ago had Chris Grayling been paying attention. Though that would have required a change of character. Bizarrely, there are even rumours Failing Grayling might actually keep his job as transport secretary. For the comedy value, if nothing else. In which case, he really will be the gift that keeps on giving.
After announcing that the UK would be trying to rustle up a taskforce with other EU countries – Britain only has about two seaworthy ships left in its navy, so acting on its own isn’t really an option – in the hope that things quietened down a little, Hunt sat down, fearing the worst. Which never really came. Instead of the pile-on from Labour and irate Tories about the government dozing off on the job, almost everyone – including the shadow junior foreign minister, Fabian Hamilton, who was standing in for Emily Thornberry, who had been knocked off her bike at the weekend – queued up to thank the Lord that it had happened on Hunt’s watch rather than when Johnson was foreign secretary. In which case we’d probably still have no idea a tanker had even been seized.
Hunt wasn’t in the mood to look a gift horse in the mouth. He all but admitted the game was up for his leadership ambitions and was happy to accept the accolades showered both on him and Duncan, who was sitting bathed in self-righteousness several rows behind him, with the best of grace. Even allowing himself the odd self-deprecating remark both about being an entrepreneur and the son of a naval officer. The old ones are … the old ones.
A few members of Team Boris got in the odd snarky remark, but by and large they kept themselves in check. Why bother to cause trouble when they had won? Hunt would be history in 48 hours and Johnson would be in charge. Free to dump this wishy-washy alliance with the EU and join the Trump-led US Praetorian Guard. With any luck, we’d be at war within weeks. That should take people’s minds off Brexit.
