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As @EmilyThornberry gives a setpiece speech on Labour’s foreign policy vision, I am reminded of one of the more pointless days of my journalistic life.
Jeremy had just appointed Emily as shadow defence secretary, and I was tasked with combing through the archives to find out her qualifications for this weighty post, and her views on Britain’s strategic future.
I looked through her website. Nothing. Hansard. TheyWorkForYou. She had, as best as I could tell, never spoken on defence. Never joined a committee on it. Never put forward a parliamentary question.
At last, I resorted to checking the EDMs. And there it was! Alongside the usual commitments to Bomb-banning and disapproval of US and UK intervention overseas, was a single solitary defence-specific EDM. The issue regarding our Armed Forces about which she felt most strongly.
It was: This House believes that the bearskin hats worn by the troops outside Buckingham Palace are the result of cruelty to animals, and should be replaced with fake fur.
Time has blurred the memory on this, and it may be that I missed out some scintillating previous intervention on the topic. But whenever I see Thornberry talking about Britain’s place in the world, all I can think of is fake fur bearskins.
