Defence

The case for Carswell

Douglas Carswell has an outside chance of becoming the chairman of the Defence Select Committee. I hope MPs take a punt and elect him because his ideas on defence procurement deserve regular airings. The festering sore of defence procurement went septic under Gordon Brown. The Nimrod Inquiry and the Gray Report concluded that contractors and the defence establishment operate a ‘conspiracy of optimism’ which disregards the requirements of specific theatres, causing casualties and diminishing military capability. Soldiers in Helmand cannot subdue Helmand with Viking trucks that were designed for arctic warfare (why the hell would we be fighting there anyway?). Whilst there are no panaceas in warfare, heavy armour, light

The Department for Fragile States?

The Department for International Development (DFID) should forsake peaceful but poor countries and instead turn into “a world leader in tackling the problems of fragile states.” That’s what a new Chatham House report by Alex Evans, who used to be an adviser to Hilary Benn, and his colleague, David Steven, argue: ‘If the UK wants to deepen its commitment to backing the challenges posed by fragile states, it needs to remodel DFID extensively, with the department concentrating on developing a coherent preventive agenda for fragile states. The Secretary of State for International Development should make it clear that where a poor country’s main need is financial, the UK will not

Call the committee to order

It’s committee chairmanship season in Westminster, and there are two noteworthy battles. Michael Fallon and Andrew Tyrie are scrapping over the Treasury Select Committee. The FT summarises the pros and cons of both. Fallon, who served as John McFall’s deputy, remains the front-runner, but the cerebral Tyrie has an impeccable record as an economist, committee member and constituency MP – I grew up near Chichester and Tyrie deserves credit for tackling the city’s perennial flooding problems; and, for what it’s worth, he won the Spectator’s backbencher of the year award again last year. I understand that Tyrie has the requisite number of backers, as well as ties with Nigel Lawson,

Organising for national security

Four weeks into the new government and the National Security Council machinery is still being put in place and ministers are still getting read into their briefs. The visit by William Hague, Andrew Mitchell and Liam Fox to Afghanistan was important, despite the brouhaha over the Defence Secretary’s comments. Such a visit was simply not imaginable under the Brown government. On the other hand, insiders say there is no real difference yet from the NSID committee that Gordon Brown created and the National Security Council that David Cameron has convened – except that the latter meets weekly, producing a torrent of tasks for officials. Permanent Secretaries are meeting regularly to

The Tories have their eyes on Iran

You may not have expected anything less, but it’s still encouraging to see the new government pay so much attention to Afghanistan. After David Cameron’s meeting with Hamid Karzai last week, no less than three ministers have visited the country today: William Hague, Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell. And Whitehall’s number-crunchers are busy trying to find extra money for the mission. There’s a sense, though, that all the attention actually represents an underlying shift in focus. In his interview with the Telegraph today, Liam Fox is surprisingly forthright on Afghanistan, suggesting that our troops won’t hang around to fully rebuild the country: “What we want is a stable enough Afghanistan,

Building on the coalition’s good start

A week in, and I am loving the Conservative-led government. The new line-up of Secretaries of State is very impressive and, though a few solid Tory politicians missed out on Cabinet posts, the inclusion of the Liberal Democrat bench has swelled the government’s talent quota. David Cameron has infused No 10 with energy and purpose. You can just feel the umpf. As the former MP John Gummer said, there is now “smile on the face of Britain”. Foreign Secretary William Hague’s trip to the US set the right tone by calling the UK-US link “an unbreakable alliance”. If he now goes on to places where the “economic action” is, to

A grim reminder of the Islamist threat?

Yesterday’s attempted car-bombing in Times Square doesn’t really tell us anything beyond that there are sociapaths willing to blow people up, and that sometimes luck – rather than judgement – foils their bloody plans.  But, given the Pakistani Taliban’s claim that they were responsible for the attempt, it does serve as a grim reminder of the poison seeping out of that region.   The question now, and for the next few months, is whether the West will somehow become more engaged inside Pakistan.  It’s notable how British ministers have increasingly namechecked the country when justifying our presence in Afghanistan – but, still, it seems that the Taliban and other Islamist

A culture of intimidation and a conspiracy to silence

On the afternoon of 4 June 2009, John Hutton, then Secretary of State for Defence, told the House of Commons: ‘Every one of our servicemen and women has the right to know that we are doing everything possible to ensure that every pound of investment in our equipment programme goes towards the front line and is not wasted in inefficient or weak processes of acquisition. That is why I asked Bernard Gray in December last year to conduct a detailed examination of progress in implementing the MOD’s acquisition change programme, as I hope right hon. and hon. Members will recall. I have to be satisfied that the current programme of

Cable catches a broadside

What is the difference between ‘an alternative’ and ‘an addition’? It is on this question that the Liberal Democrat manifesto turns. If there is a difference, then there is a substantial black hole in their deficit reduction plans. There is a difference. The manifesto presents a £3.4bn public sector payroll measure as an addition to existing government measures, when in fact the small-print discloses that it’s an alternative. Caught double counting, at best the Lib Dems would cut £36.6bn of the £40bn or so pledged. Under further scrutiny from Andrew Neil and Stephanie Flanders, Cable could not define where a further £10bn of cuts was coming from. £20bn of the

Nick Clegg and the 3 am phone call

Compared to many CoffeeHousers, I don’t find the Liberal Democrat’s foreign policy positions as problematic. Nick Clegg is smart, internationalist and has – unlike David Cameron and Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair) – plenty of foreign policy pre-leadership experience. But looking through the Lib Dem manifesto, I came across its pledge on Iran, which is quite problematic for a party that is keen to shed its beardie-wierdie, peacenik image and whose leader may even end up running the Foreign Office. The manifesto says that, on the one hand, the Lib Dems support “action by the international community to stop Iran obtaining nuclear weapons.” But the party also makes clear that

Where will Clegg meet his Waterloo?

The FT’s Jim Pickard writes: ‘Cameron will be cursing the order of the debates. He’d much prefer to be attacking Nick Clegg on domestic issues than foreign affairs on Thursday.’ I’m not so sure. Foreign Policy is the arena where the Tories are concrete, populist and accessible. The same is not true for the Lib Dems. Along with Iain Martin and John Rentoul, Pete noted that Ed Davey is vague on the Lib Dem Trident replacement policy. Davey’s vague with good reason: the policy is hopelessly confused. The manifesto says: ‘Rule out the like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear weapons system. At a cost of £100 billion over a lifetime

No clear winner in the foreign affairs debate

Only defuse.  That seemed to be the approach of all three participants in the Daily Politics’ foreign affairs debate this afternoon.  The frequent questions from Andrew Neil and Mark Urban put David Miliband, William Hague and the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey on the collective back foot.  It was all they could do to take some of the sting out of proceedings. In Miliband’s case, that meant Iraq and defence spending.  On the former, he started with one of the bluntest statements we’ve heard from any government minister on the issue: “If we knew then what we know now,” he said, “we wouldn’t have gone into Iraq.”  You can see the

A world without planes

In the book a World Without the West, the authors invite the reader to imagine the non-Western world where South-to-South grow so strong that they bypass the traditional Euro-Atlantic powers. Stuck in southern Europe because of Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption, I have begun thinking about life without airplane travel.   The last 15 years have not only seen an explosion in cheap airline travel – spawning new tourist industries in once-forgotten European cities – but there has been an increase in the use of air transport for goods, mail, soldiers and much else besides. What would happen if this is ground to a halt in Europe not for a weekend or weeks

Cameron has a policy agenda to change Britain – he should tell us about it

Cameron has not, alas, broken free of the never-ending opinion poll bungee jump which is the story of his leadership of the Conservative Party. Cleggmania is a bubble – but the thing about bubbles is that one can never quite tell when they will burst. The Tories, who have lost the most votes due to this bubble, will have their needles out. But in my News of the World column today I suggest they focus on policy because they do have hard ideas that could radically change Britain. Cameron missed a trick by failing to mention his single best policy, Gove’s school reform, last week.  On immigration, his plan for reducing it

Brown will fear the foreign policy debate most of all

The Tories’ Invitation to join the Government was never going to dwell on defence. (You can listen to the brief chapter on defence here.)  But that doesn’t mean defence isn’t an election issue. It is, and it’s one that the Tories will win. Brown’s defence record is abysmal even by his standards. Former service chiefs have described how Brown ‘guillotined’ defence budgets whilst fighting two wars, and field commanders in Afghanistan have made constant reference to equipment shortages. These accusations were corroborated by facts that Brown then tried to distort before a public inquiry. That’s not all. As Alex notes, buried in Labour’s manifesto, is an admission that the Defence

Alex Massie

Labour’s Defence Weakness

Meanwhile, I’m puzzled by quite a bit of Labour’s manifesto. Some of it seems rather sullen, defensive and most put-out. Take the passage on defence for instance: there’s much protesting that, actually, defence budgets so have risen and it’s rotten that anyone should ever think anything to the contrary. And yet Labour seem to concede – implicitly anyway – that their critics have a point. Otherwise why would they feel the need to promise –  as part of “the next stage of national renewal” no less – to “conduct a Strategic Defence Review to equip our Armed Forces for 21st Century challenges”? Doesn’t this rather suggest that the Armed Forces

Labour’s nuclear no-show

Today, President Barack Obama hosts leaders from 46 countries for a two-day nuclear security summit that will focus on how to better safeguard weapons materials, both old and new, and to keep them out of the hands of terrorists. Labour’s manifesto was also launched today. What do the two things have in common? Not a lot, really. But they could have had a lot in common – if the Labour government had been willing to be bold. Here’s how. As preparation for the summit, the US signed a new treaty with Russia last week to reduce the nuclear stockpiles of both nations, and the Obama administration issued a revised nuclear arms

A good time to bury bad news

Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Someday the Bloody Sunday Inquiry will be published. It has taken 12 years to conduct and it has cost £200 million (about the going rate for state sponsored marriage, or Aston Villa). £2.50p per head is extortionate, so I’d quite like to see Lord Savile’s findings. I don’t expect to enjoy the experience. The report is said to confirm what was already known: confronted by an angry and possibly violent mob, heavily outnumbered British soldiers panicked and opened fire. It will be an expensive impertinence, like reading an idiot child’s private school report. Anyway, the government will not publish the report until well after the election. I

Are the Tories ready for joined-up government?

The Civil Service is readying itself for a new government. The BBC has already reported a discussion of efficiency savings among senior officials. In another part of Whitehall, work is a foot on how to set up a National Security Council should the Tories win. I have in the last few weeks been interviewing ex-ministers and senior officials as research for a RUSI paper, due out soon after the election, on how to improve the government’s security set-up. Traipsing around various departments, a number of interesting conclusions have come to light: – Conservative ideas for an NSC are not the same as the government’s NSID committee, however much ministers say

Last orders | 7 April 2010

The choppers, and the whoppers, were flying at Westminster today. David Cameron invited the prime minister to try a spot of accountability at PMQs. Would he admit that he scrimped on transport aircraft in Helmand? Brown, with breathtaking cheek and not a little rhetorical dexterity, flipped the question upside down. ‘I do not accept that our commanding officers gave the wrong advice,’ he said and insisted that he never sent underequipped troops into battle. He clarified this with a smokescreen. ‘I take full responsibilitiy but I also take the advice of our commanding officers.’ Here was the morality of the restaurant freeloader, accepting the food but passing the bill down