If proof was needed that deference is dead in Parliament, look no further than the interview Tom Tugendhat has given to The House magazine. The new chair of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee uses his first interview since winning the coveted position to make clear he’s ready and willing to be Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary or Defence Secretary should his services be required.
However, the part that caught Mr S’s eye relates to the current occupant of the Foreign Office. Tugendhat – who was elected to Parliament in 2015 – appears to launch an attack on Boris Johnson’s modus operandi:
‘He’s certainly got a lot of passion for the United Kingdom and has a way of expressing himself which certainly carries a lot of noise.
There are many people who don’t understand quite how difficult it is to translate humour, because humour is fundamentally cultural. It is really, really hard to do cross-cultural humour.’
Tugendhat goes on to say that rather than ‘noise’ and ‘humour’, a ‘very, very cold and considered approach’ is required at this time:
‘I just think that at the moment, when what we really need is a very, very cool headed, stern and strategic look at our foreign policy and our alliances, what we need is a very, very cold and considered approach to our foreign strategy.
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