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Labour’s military shame – defence cuts and incompetence
Posted by Tory Rascal (@toryrascal)
Tuesday, 15th December 2009
As I correctly pointed out last week, the Forces have received a very raw deal from the Government.
First there was Alistair Darling’s concealed £2.2bn cut in the Pre-Budget Report. Now Labour’s patently useless Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, is set to announce the closure of RAF Cottesmore, the early retirement of the Harrier, the loss of a Tornado squadron and thousands of job cuts – all to fund the purchase of 22 new Chinook helicopters.
There is a serious question here about whether the Government will actually be able to deliver on its promise that the new aircraft will be ready from 2012. Defence procurement under Labour has turned into a comedy of errors, with some projects over six years overdue and with total cost overruns of £4.5bn. Does anyone actually believe the Government when they say they set out timetables for procurement?
Another question raised by the Government’s blithering incompetence is whether it actually has an eye on the future. Ainsworth is likely to announce that those 22 new Chinooks will start to be phased into service in 2012. Is this long enough to recruit and train the requisite aircrew? I seriously doubt it, particuarly with training budgets under unprecedented pressure.
As well as detailing how the aircraft are to be crewed, the Government absolutely must be clear about why it is purchasing them: it strikes me as a tacit admission that we will still be there in 2012 and beyond, a possibility that no-one in the Government dares to entertain. If we won’t be there for much longer, then what will those aircraft be good for, as Labour picks away at the Forces’ full-spectrum capabilities by ditching air superiority platforms?
From a broader perspective, with each successive announcement of yet another project’s abject failure, the case for a total rejection of Labour’s protectionist defence industrial strategy becomes stronger. An incoming Conservative government will have to ask whether the Armed Forces are there to win wars or create jobs. Labour’s defence procurement failures indicate that the two seem to be mutually exclusive. Douglas Carswell campaigns for the MOD to turn to commerical off-the-shelf procurement. This morning’s news seems to indicate that such a change in approach is long overdue.
Labour’s short-termist approach to running the Armed Forces has been responsible for a decline in Britain’s long-term military capacity that could prove to be irreversible. If the Government envisages a future where Britain’s forces really are only to be used for peace support operations – the only possible option if we cannot deploy the full-spectrum capabilities that Labour seems intent on destroying – then it must be absolutely clear about it. Either that, or it must commit the resources that the Armed Forces actually need to continue to rank among the world’s most capable. The alternative to that clarity is a future of more overruns and pretended capabilities, and a continuing, unaffordable inclination to ‘punch above our weight’ – military sound and fury, signifying nothing.
