There's no need for the Tories to descend into the gutter

You might be forgiven for expecting that a Defence Secretary giving a speech on defence during an election campaign would involve an announcement about his party’s defence policy. And Michael Fallon did ‘announce’ something today, which is that the Tories would commit to four nuclear submarines, updated missiles and warheads in a renewal of the Trident continuous at-sea nuclear deterrent. This was an announcement in the sense that the Defence Secretary said it in a speech with a party-branded board behind him, but it wasn’t a surprise.

What was a surprise was that Fallon, usually one of the cannier political operators out there, managed to give a speech attacking another party’s defence policy and claiming that his Prime Minister ‘always puts defence first’ while dodging a commitment to maintaining spending at 2 per cent of GDP. When we asked Fallon about this afterwards, he listed the spending commitments Cameron had made, said the manifesto would be published next week, and that he would be speaking again on defence tomorrow.