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By Sam Macrory - 16th February 2011
Someone has blundered. And while nobody is yet sure who the culprit is, Jim Murphy is already pointing the finger of guilt.
The shadow defence secretary is on the look out for the unnamed villain who sacked 38 military personnel by email, with one of that unlucky number still fighting in Afghanistan. Not good, as blunders go.
As in these awkward situations, it’s the done thing to launch an investigation. Sooner or later someone will be named, shamed, and probably fired. But that didn’t stop Murphy from calling an urgent question in the Commons yesterday afternoon, with Liam Fox, the defence secretary, summoned to explain the situation.
Murphy wanted answers - and some rare media coverage too. Shadow defence secretary is a lonely posting: all unconvincingly-worn flak jackets on ignored trips to warzones, with any muttered grumblings straying dangerously close to the unforgivable territory of talking down “our boys.”
A botched sacking, with the added detail of the evil email, was too good an opportunity for Murphy to turn down. Indeed, Fox grumbled, this was opportunism of the worst kind.
That doesn’t really work. It’s how opposition functions, and having occupied Murphy’s thankless role for five long years, Fox probably remembers that only too well. But this was an unwanted date in his diary and Labour MPs were ambitiously shouting at him to “resign”. So he decided to front up early in the hope of an early return to the safety of the Ministry of Defence.
“This is a completely unacceptable way to treat anyone, not least our armed forces. I regret this and want to reiterate the unreserved apology already made by the Army and on behalf of the Ministry of Defence," Fox told MPs. That sounded like the end of the matter, but no, Murphy’s 15 minutes were barely underway.
With his high horse saddled and ready, he clambered aboard. “It is a shame that Ministers had to be summoned to the Commons, when they should have immediately asked to come here voluntarily,” he chided. Fox raised an eyebrow. And, added Murphy, to sack a soldier by email is “utterly unforgivable.”
Whether that trumps Fox’s “completely unacceptable” is debatable, as the exact definition of an apology. Murphy called for one, although as Fox and his ministerial sidekick Peter Luff shouted back, he’d already been given one just a few minutes ago.
Murphy’s heavy-handedness seemed to tweak the never un-sensitive Fox, who had the Labour benches howling by blaming everything on "incompetence and the economic inheritance that they left behind." The speaker intervened as the volume rose, but once the "economic incompetence" weapon is employed, stalemate inevitably follows. Labour rabbits stare back, firmly stuck, as the headlight points in their direction.
John Woodcock, the young Labour MP, did his best. “Just so that the House is clear, he is not actually blaming the previous, Labour government for this abominable failure in procedure, is he?” Woodcock’s protests went unheard, as Fox inevitably hammered on about Labour’s “financial mismanagement.”
Was this a “betrayal of the military covenant?” asked Woodcock’s colleague Tom Watson. “Of course it’s not”, shouted Bob Russell, the colourful Liberal Democrat MP. No such fury from Fox, who by now was fixed on a single track. This was, of course, “a betrayal of the people of this country, where economic incompetence has forced us to reduce the size and budget of our armed forces.”
This was getting tedious, and not going according to plan for Murphy.
It got worse as Ben Wallace, a Tory MP, told the House that when he was in the army, during Labour’s time in office, his friends had been sacked by email. Murphy, he said, was all “phoney anger.” That made Murphy look angry, and it looked convincing from the Press Gallery at least.
However, Fox said this was just another one of Labour’s “ingenious smokescreens” – though they will surely have to go in the budget cuts - “created...to make the House discuss anything other than the appalling economic mess”. Word bingo players with “economic", "mess”, "financial", "incompetence", and "mismanagement" were scoring highly. The rest of us were slowly fading.
The human victims of the ill-advised email had long been forgotten as MPs, yet again, got stuck on economic legacies and necessities. What were we here for again?
At least James Gray’s solution was more exciting, as the Tory MP flared his nostrils and turned all General Melchett to declare that he wanted a “few hides to be flayed”.
No doubt to Gray’s disappointment, the best the guilty hides will get is the removal of their swipe card and a P45. And hopefully not by email. Until then, Jim Murphy will just have to wait a little longer to find out who the hides belong to.
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