Benedict Brogan is off to China with the Prime Ministerial travelling circus, plus various business bigwigs including Richard Branson. But as a sequence of posts on Benedict’s blog yesterday record, all did not appear to be going smoothly as the trip got underway. At 12.27pm , the first indications that all might not be well began to emerge:
Oh dear. Bad enough that Sir Richard Branson has to fly to China on a BA plane, but he’s also fallen out with BAA and Ruth Kelly. There’s been an almighty cock up involving the Dept of Transport’s security guys here at Heathrow, and as a result it’s chaos at the Royal Suite. The business bigwigs were kept sitting in a coach outside the gates for 55 mins. Branson was so cross he called the head of BAA to complain. Mr Brown isn’t here yet, but he may want to have a word with Ruth. This may take quite a lot of in-flight champagne to fix.
But things were about to get worse. 1.13pm, and Brogan is showing that irresistible Daily Mail sangfroid:
It’s not for me to say this trip is cursed, but from where I sit on the PM’s BA charter (fabulous bacon sarnies, do hope Sir Richard likes them) I can see a BA airbus that has just come off the runway due to a lack of undercarriage. It doesn’t look too serious even if it is sitting at an odd angle, but rumour is all flights are grounded. So we are delayed until BAA gets the mess cleared. This is turning into a busy day for Tom Kelly, Tony Blair’s former spokesman, and now head of comms for BAA.
More drama was still to come. 1.35pm:
This gets weirder. The PM’s motorcade was coming up the A4 as the plane approached and at one point his detectives grew alarmed. The suggestion is the stricken Airbus misjudged its approach and nearly took out the PM. I can’t vouch for this, but this trip is getting more eventful by the minute and we’re only now taking off.
Now, fortunately, the intrepid crew are safely ensconced in Beijing, where there’s only one small snag:
For the past three days the Chinese have asked No10 staff to ensure we don’t ask about democracy. It was explained to them that this might not be possible, and sure enough Mr Wen got asked by both Nick Robinson and Tom Bradby why it was taking so long to democratise. I suspect it may take some time: we’ve been issued with a detailed list of what is expected of us, including ” please stand up and applaud when the two PMs enter the venue”. We didn’t, but that may just be because we are fast asleep.
We’ll be watching riveted over the next few days…
