Then, as Mr Blair left, she clipped them on with the ferocity of a snapping turtle. She whipped off her watch and then clamped it back on.

Jewellery in place, she was armed for battle. Her strategy, as always, was to bore us into submission. Her voice was unusually husky as she droned away. All her words began to merge together and I began to concentrate on the lonely figure of Geoff Hoon, sitting on the front bench. You may remember that he had a spat with Mrs Beckett and so now he is the Minister for Europe who isn’t allowed to talk on Europe.

As I understand it, he is now piloting our transport strategy with Kazakhstan. Yesterday he clutched a binder that held, I presume, his children’s homework. Mrs Beckett had trotted through Palestine, Iran and Syria before she came to Iraq. She said that the situation was appalling. “There is no question of us cutting and running,” she husked. Normally, at this point, she would say that we are not changing our strategy. Thus the first sign that this was not the case came with the words: “That does not mean our strategy is standing still. In fact, our approach has evolved very significantly in recent months, in response to a dynamic situation.”

A dynamic situation? Well, that’s one way of describing the chaos of Iraq. But then she announced that things weren’t that bad after all. “As I made clear to the House on October 31,” she said, “the process of transferring security responsibilities to the Iraqi security forces is well under way.” Did she say that? If so, no one can remember it. But this was only her way of saying that what she was about to say was nothing new. In politics, this is almost always a sign that something is new. Her voice purred on.

Suddenly the woman who never has a fact was offering them to us on a plate: she expected that the coalition would hand over in Najaf province next month and in Maysan in January. Indeed, things were going so well in Basra that she had “confidence” that we may “achieve transition” in the spring. Achieve transition? What did it mean? But, before you could say the words “exit strategy”, Mrs Beckett had moved on, pretending that she had done absolutely nothing at all.

Her statement drove Ken Clarke into paroxysms of disbelief. “I found it surreal to hear the Foreign Secretary’s description of Iraq, which appeared to be that the plan is working!” He denounced it as out of touch with reality. I could almost hear Mrs Beckett snort at that, if she ever does such a thing.

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