Method acting the role of an exhibitor at a model aircraft convention is beginning to pay dividends for Michael Fallon. Mr Airfix is now so deep in character he has even begun to think the part. Every defence secretary needs to be a bit delusional to stay sane, but Fallon has made it into an art form. As an exercise in the perfection of ministerial dullness, he is almost mesmeric.
Where most people look at the country’s military and count a handful of ships, a few dozen planes and a single-storey car park full of tanks, Mr Airfix sees row upon row of weaponry stretching miles into the middle distance in a ring of plastic. Planes that might have once been serviceable but have been long since decommissioned, ships that were only ever an ink mark of departmental double accountancy - Fallon has seen them all because he has made them and they are very good.
This kind of flawed mental agility served Fallon well at defence questions, where the hawks and sceptics were out in force to check whether the chancellor’s commitment to Nato’s target of 2% of government spending on defence would be kept. “What I basically want to know”, growled Big Vern Coaker, the shadow defence minister, “is whether there’s going to be any monkey business going on?” Because if it turned out there was, then Big Vern would happily smash up Mr Airfix’s model collection. Along with his legs.
Fallon was appalled. “The government will stick by its promises”, he insisted. “Anything that can be counted as defence spending will be counted as defence spending.” And what could be counted as defence spending? “Anything that Nato says is defence spending.” The feeling the defence secretary had nobbled his fellow model enthusiasts in Nato to include any number of Airfix accessories to reach a 2% target was so inescapable that even some of his own backbenchers quizzed him on it. Fallon remained firm. Glue, paint and transfers were an essential party of any model army.
Fallon’s ability to think creatively also came in handy when he was asked how the military efforts to defeat Islamic State were going. Extremely well, he assured everyone. “We have made 300 air strikes”, he said. “And we have pushed Isis a little way back along the Tigris”. How far, he couldn’t say. It all looks so different when you are building to 1.144 scale.
Mr Airfix was about to add that he sincerely believed Isis would play fair and not make any unnecessary terrorist attacks during the summer recess while he was on holiday, when the Commons got into its usual row about what Isis should be called. “It’s Daesh,” the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh declared, unaware that Daesh was Arabic for Isis. Britain may be losing the battle on the ground in the Middle East, but by God it’s going to teach these foreign Johnnies what to call themselves.
Every defence frontbench team is obliged to have its own Private Pike, and in Mark Lancaster, David Cameron has found one of the very best. The junior minister gives the impression of having come up through the remedial ranks and it seemed an act of cruelty to expect him to answer questions about the reserves. Still, you cannot accuse the government of double standards when it comes to making up the numbers of regulars.
“Can the minister tell us whether 6,000 people who have left the military are now homeless”, asked the Lib Dem MP John Pugh. Silence. Poor old Pike hadn’t gathered that this was a question he was meant to answer. After a long delay, he struggled to the despatch box. “We don’t collect those numbers,” he said.
“Stupid boy,” Mr Airfix muttered under his breath.
