More riffing on Nelson! Fraser, that is. His Telegraph article and subsequent Coffee House post on future spending cuts argue that the Tories are, defensively, planning to leave the NHS budget untouched (and international development!) and that doing so will require 10% cuts across every other department. Including defence.
Since most people would, I think, accept that the armed forces are under-funded and over-stretched as it is, imposing further cuts surely and necessarily demands a reappraisal of current commitments and future capabilities. But do we hear anything of that from the Tories? I’m not sure we do. Indeed, Liam Fox’s speech to the Scottish Tory conference suggested, as I wrote at the time, that Tory foreign and security policy was, essentially, much the same as the current ministry’s – only with more money being spent. Furthermore, if Fox’s absolute commitment to replacing Trident is honoured then, one imagines, other areas of the defence budget are likely to be squeezed still further.
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