There was dismay in Whitehall at the way decisions on the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) were left until the very last moment. But those who were at Oxford with David Cameron explain that this is his preferred method. He collects information and views for as long as he possibly can, or a bit longer. Then he decides. They call it ‘government by essay crisis’.
The result looks awful, because there seems to be so little relation between the National Security Strategy, which sets out and calibrates the threats, and the Review, which cuts. We are in the weird position of buying aircraft carriers because of the last government’s crazy contracts, while not really intending to buy the aircraft which they are supposed to carry. It may well be that neither carrier is ever used, and that the Navy is therefore blowing £6 billion. But it is interesting that the new chiefs are less annoyed than might have been expected. They feel that they have been given time to wrestle the current chaos into the shape of the new strategy, which they support. They think the essay crisis has forced all involved to work out what they really think — something which, for years and years, has not happened.
In the latest Sunday Times, Dominic Lawson recorded his wife asking Jonathan Powell, when he had just become Tony Blair’s chief of staff, what motivated him. Powell replied with the single word: ‘Power’. If you were to ask modern prime ministers what they require to exercise that power, all the successful ones would also have a one-word answer: ‘Powell’. Margaret Thatcher had Charles Powell, in name her foreign affairs private secretary, in reality much, much more. Mr Blair had Jonathan, Charles’s youngest brother.
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