It seems the Labour lot has got themselves in quite a tizzy over events in the Middle East – and this morning saw an excruciating interview in which the defence minister couldn’t answer the most straightforward question about Iran. Luke Pollard gave a car crash interview earlier today on Sky News, where the Labour minister appeared stumped over a simple question about Britain’s stance on Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran. If he can’t answer on this, what does he know?
Pollard squirmed as Sky’s Wilfred Frost quizzed him three times about whether the Uk government is ‘disappointed’ in President Trump’s move to strike Iran. Asked whether No. 10 is ‘disappointed ultimately that the US felt it necessary to attack Iran over the weekend’, Pollard decided to, er, obfuscate. Rather than explain to viewers the position of Sir Keir Starmer’s government, he replied:
Well the US felt it necessary to take action to alleviate what they felt was a severe threat to their security and regional security. Our focus as a country has been to get Iran back to the negotiating table, for them to negotiate in good faith, and that is the priority.
To stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon – and they should never be able to possess a nuclear weapon – we need not only for the nuclear facilities to be disrupted but also for the knowledge and awareness within the Iranian regime to be locked out so they can’t ever develop nuclear weapons again in the future. Once they’ve started on that path they possess the knowledge which means they could go back to it.
That may be the case but it’s not quite answering the question…
When Frost pushed again, Pollard insisted that is is ‘not for me to comment on the particular US action’. But as a government minister, he can absolutely comment on Labour’s stance. The Sky presenter thought so too, telling the defence minister: ‘Forgive me, minister, but it is specifically your role to comment on military action when it happens around the world so we know what our government thinks about it. Is our government pleased or disappointed that the US took this action?’ Third time wasn’t a charm in this case – with Pollard once again declining to respond directly. Quelle surprise…
Pollard’s poor performance comes less than a week after his colleague, Treasury minister Emma Reynolds, experienced a car crash of her own after she couldn’t tell LBC’s Nick Ferrari both exactly where the new Lower Thames Crossing road is and how much the total bill will come to. Where on earth are they pulling these ministers from?
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