The Sketch: A small flourish, but the same old unflappable Hoon
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Your support makes all the difference.We couldn't, in all decency, have asked for a better amuse-gueule for the parliamentary trough ahead. Geoff Hoon is on the menu at every course; and quite a bit of him is already splashed across the bib I have to use on these occasions.
What can we say to his credit? He appeared marvellously unconcerned; I tried to say magnificently unconcerned but the word-processing program I use doesn't permit the phrase within six square inches of any combination of H double O and N. He looked and sounded the same as he always looks and sounds. At one point he allowed himself a little flourish which, in his terms, was positively operatic: he jabbed his finger at a Liberal Democrat.
We'll not see his like again. Whatever that is.
Julian Lewis used his frontbench turn to thank the minister for all the personal courtesies he'd extended during his ministerial term. If the timing wasn't clumsy it was unkind. I don't mean that as a criticism.
Nicholas Soames developed his accusation of equipment shortage into an argument about political failure. The shortages (of bullets, boots and body armour) were the result of the Government's unwillingness to announce they were going to war for a month after the military decision had been taken.
It is an ingenious argument with toxic effects. It seems Mrs Thatcher prepared for the miners' strike more thoroughly than Mr Hoon prepared for sending troops into Iraq.
Crispin Blunt - the hero of a revolution no one now remembers - asked the minister whether our troops had sufficient riot-control equipment. This produced the only memorable phrase of Mr Hoon's career: troops were effectively equipped "in all the television programmes I've seen". If we are relying on these informal accounting vehicles I hope the National Audit Office will include the "Sketch" in its next list of witnesses.
Today, it's top-ups. As the radio said, the situation is so unclear we no longer know who's calling whose bluff. We do know that if the Prime Minister loses the vote (which I don't think he will) it'll make things more difficult for Mr Howard tomorrow.
My bet is that Lord Hutton will take a more robust approach to the Prime Minister than is presently assumed. The questioning last summer had a distinctly ethical flavour. Was it fair that? Do you think it was right that? Was this an honourable course? Wouldn't it have been right to?
When the Prime Minister was asked whether he'd had anything to do with the naming of David Kelly he replied: "Emphatically not." We haven't heard how he will gloss over "emphatically" and "not", but ingenious legalese will be no defence against an ethical analysis of the events surrounding Dr Kelly's death.
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