The Sketch: Don't panic. The war has started but nothing significant has changed

Not for the first time the anti-war faction had the best of it. That is, they had the worst of it and thereby showed us how little they were considered, how much they were despised, how far they were from any centre of influence.

Alice Mahon's point about the B-52 bombers parked, as of yesterday morning, at a Gloucestershire air base (we can't be more specific at this time) was that "the war has already started through the back door". Didn't this make a mockery, she asked, of the debate and vote last week? It did, it did, it made a full-scale Live Aid, red-nosed comic mockery of the whole occasion.

Bernard Jenkin, to his credit (and that's not a phrase one can easily finish), had brought up the subject and attacked the minister with it. As the Tory policy is to support the Government over the Gulf more or less unreservedly, this was ingenious.

The minister they call Hoon had suggested that in spite of much increased air warfare in the no-fly zones nothing significant had changed. Mr Jenkin suggested that the air forces surely were engaging in pre-emptive strikes, indeed that we had already witnessed the opening shots of the Second Gulf War (his capitals). Mr Hoon's bland denials (he has no other sort) only fired up Mr Jenkin's reproachfulness.

The tactics had changed, Mr Jenkin told the House. They were clearing the way for an invasion. The arrival of American bombers at Fairford (I've given their position away! Eat this column!) meant that we were on the cusp of war and if the Government wanted to win the hearts and minds of the British people it must be more honest and open.

Mr Hoon mumbled he'd been meaning to bring up the thing about the, er, you know, bombers. Mr Hoon's technique is to pretend to be very, very stupid. He doesn't have to pretend much.

Vincent Cable told us half the armed forces in the Gulf had refused anthrax vaccinations. No, Lewis Mooney said. Fifty-one per cent of all soldiers had accepted the official recommendation, as had a full 65 per cent of those going into anthrax-intensive territory. What little faith our troops seem to have in their leaders.

Staff Officer Simpson, Keith, 54, reported an off-the-record briefing from a senior journalist. "One veteran reptile told me that the MoD media strategy was not to have one," he said, quite rudely, we were pleased to see. Oh, on the contrary, a government journeyman replied. A very great deal of thought and effort had gone into the media strategy. He wasn't going to say what it was, naturally, except that falsehood and lies would not be spread to the families back home. Good grief, you may think. Has this been cleared by the Prime Minister? And isn't it insanely dangerous to institute a completely new policy at a time of such uncertainty? If they're to tell the truth, morale will collapse. They'd tell us that the army has been issued with melting boots, stalling tanks, defective radios and string vests to protect them from biological attack. They'd be telling us the war had started. For make no mistake. The balloon has gone up. Inside Lewis Mooney's shirt.

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