Ashdown goes Fox-hunting

There’s a quite remarkable op-ed by Paddy Ashdown in The Times (£) today which goes public with a lot of the griping about Liam Fox that one heard behind the scenes at the time of the Strategic Defence Review. Ashdown remarks that the ‘problem with the SDSR was not speed, but lack of political direction.’ He then details how ‘Sir David Richards, then head of the Army and now Chief of the Defence Staff, had to bypass the whole process (and his Secretary of State) to appeal to the Prime Minister to avert catastrophe in the Army.’ Before concluding that:

‘The decisions made in the SDSR, with some notable exceptions, such as scrapping Harriers, were broadly right — but only thanks to the last-minute intervention of the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister.’

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