Can the Tories really avoid any proper discussion of their spending plans for the Ministry of Defence before the election? Though the international situation is so unstable, the party has clearly decided that as defence spending is not an election issue, it won’t talk about it.
Perhaps they’d get away with this given Labour is hardly more enthusiastic and defence and foreign policy, were it not for Tory backbenchers, particularly those who have served in the MoD at some point. They used Defence Questions today to press Michael Fallon repeatedly on the issue. Former ministers such as Andrew Robathan and Liam Fox, and former defence select committee James Arbuthnot asked for assurances that Britain’s defence capability would be improved, rather than depleted. Michael Fallon and colleagues repeatedly turned the debate round to asking whether Labour would commit to the £34 billion of defence spending that this government is pursuing. Of course, that would keep the UK spending roughly 2 per cent of its economy on defence, but only if the economy flat-lined, which is surely not the ambition.
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