Brown plays politics over troop numbers

So Gordon Brown is in Afghanistan, pledging that Britain will provide 700 more  troops “to allow us to do more during the election period. We are confident that we are shouldering our share of the burden”. I hear that he made this commitment for a pre-election troop surge at the G20 summit to suck up to Obama – but that he hadn’t squared this with the military, who had a frantic few days trying to work out how how on earth they would find the men. Ditto his notorious claim, made during the 2007 Tory conference, that 1,000 troops would be home by Christmas. The MoD had no idea what he was talking about, so they called No.10, who didn’t know anything either. It was a piece of pre-election posturing, using soldiers as pawns in his battle against the Tories.

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Ross Clark

Britain is living beyond its means

Brown has a habit of demanding something to announce on these trips, even if there is nothing.