The Conservative chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee accidentally used a swear word in the House of Commons as he accused Vladimir Putin of playing a “shyster’s game”.
During a backbench debate on “Russia’s grand strategy”, Tom Tugendhat initially used the word “shit” instead of “shyster” to describe the game played by the Russian president.
The MP for Tonbridge and Malling insisted the UK must stand up with other Nato countries to “defend ourselves” from Russian aggression.
He said: “This is not a grand strategy. This is a cheap trick by a two-bit hustler, playing a shit … excuse me, a shyster’s game. I believe that’s acceptable, isn’t it?
“A shyster’s game that is being witnessed around the world and it is pretending to be a genuine strategic play. It is not. It is not.
Tory MP Tom Tugendhat
House of Commons
“It is a very, very low-grade trick but it is one that because we have not stood up, because we have not been willing to be as firm as we can be, because we have weakened ourselves with European Nato partners, with partners around the world, we are seeing ourselves undermined by it.”
The debate also saw Conservative MP Sir Bernard Jenkin warning that “our heads are in the sand” in relation to Russia’s “hybrid warfare campaign against the West”.
He said: “Putin’s goal is nothing less than to demonstrate the end of US global hegemony and to establish Russia on an equal footing with the US, to change Russia’s status within Europe to become the pre-eminent power, to put Russia in a position where it can permanently influence Europe and drive a wedge between Europe and the USA, and then re-establish Russia’s de facto control over as much of the former Soviet Union and its sphere of influence as possible.”
The MP for Harwich and North Essex asked “how have we reached this crisis with the West in general, and Nato in particular, so ill-prepared to face down such provocation when Putin’s malign intent has been evident in his actions for a decade-and-a-half?”.
He warned: “Ukraine is merely a component of a long-running hybrid warfare campaign against the West.”
Labour MP Chris Bryant (Rhondda) said he is concerned that because of Brexit, there is a danger EU countries will renege on policies about Russia.
He told MPs: “My anxiety about us having left the European Union is that in terms of the Europeans’ common foreign, security and defence policy, there is a danger that they will renege on the kind of policies that we would like to see.
“So, I would like us to find a way of still sitting at that table so that we can still influence those decisions.
“The Spanish prime minister said to me once that one of the problems with the EU maintaining the sanction regime is that once Britain, once Theresa May frankly, was no longer in the room, everybody started fracturing apart.”