Defence

Shades of Jack Higgins in Whitehall this morning: the Prime Minister is convening the furtive sounding National Security Council, which will be presented with initial drafts of strategic defence review. As Richard Norton-Taylor puts it, the government has the opportunity to be radical and make this a ‘horse versus tank moment’, which is ironic given that the tank is poised to pass into obsolescence. In truth, the drama is some way off; the government has delayed decisions rather than take them. The nuclear deterrent is not part of the review – the politics and economics of Trident’s replacement proving too contentious for the precious coalition. Personnel cuts are being resisted

Is Trident’s renewal (either a like-for-like replacement or an alternative) within the scope of the Strategic Defence Review or not? The Lib Dem conference voted to include an alternative in the SDR. But, apparently, the cash-strapped coalition seeks to defer any decision (which will take renewal out of the review entirely). Earlier today, Lib Dem defence minister Nick Harvey intimated that he preferred deferral. As the video below suggests, Harvey’s objective is overwhelmingly political and couched in the language of opposition, not government: I don’t see this as a ‘hot potato’ for Labour. Cast in opportunism’s obvious garb, the Liberal Democrats are playing politics with national security and the Conservatives

This is the latest in our series of posts on the Spending Review with Reform. A list of previous posts can be found here. The debate on the defence budget has become one of the most fiercely contested in recent days.  Over the weekend, editorials in both The Times and The Daily Telegraph agreed that defence was different because it wasn’t just a matter of cuts in the short term, it was also a matter of the UK’s strategic defence needs for years ahead.  Building on a report by the House of Commons Defence Select Committee, they raised concerns that the Government is forcing through the Strategic Defence and Security

As Pete wrote this morning, the plan to share aircraft carriers with France is controversial. It seems that concerns over sovereignty, job losses and differing strategic interests reduce to the one issue that no government has addressed: the protectionist system of defence procurement, which hampers the operational effectiveness of our armed forces. Typically forthright, Douglas Carswell identifies the problem: ‘Seems like protectionist defence procurement isn’t quite giving us sovereign capability the way we were promised, eh? Had we ordered much of the new carriers to be built overseas, we could have had them at a fraction of the £5 billion cost. But the asinine logic of the Defence Industrial Strategy

Two spitfires have just flown over our offices at The Spectator, to commemorate the Battle of Britain. The aircraft are deservedly iconic, but it’s a bit of shame that over the years they’ve eclipsed the de Havilland Mosquito in the public memory. They were developed too late for the Battle itself, but were incredible aircraft when they were deployed. And, crucially, privately-developed. In 1937, the British had only 46 bombers where the Germans had about 800 – and the speed at which the RAF developed was extraordinary. The battle of Britain exposed the weaknesses in the Luftwaffe – and Nazi procurement policy. Hitler relied on a vast, unwieldy bureaucracy to

Iain Martin reports that IDS has secured a £3bn fund to meet the upfront costs of his benefit reform. ‘To help ensure that IDS can make the cuts which unlock his funds for welfare reform, I am informed that Number 10 and the Treasury now accept that some of the commitments made by David Cameron before polling day to protect specific benefits will have to be revisited and potentially watered down. In return, IDS is being urged by colleagues to accept that he cannot behave like a bull in a china shop. Says one: “He has been immersed in welfare reform for years. But he can’t present his solutions as

A curious, intermediate kind of speech from Liam Fox this morning. The general emphasis on streamlining the armed forces, and shifting power away from Whitehall and towards the military, was welcome. But we’re going to have to wait for a trio of reviews before we know what that will look like in practice: the Spending Review, the Strategic Defence Review and a review by the new Defence Reform Unit, chaired by Lord Levene. As Douglas Carswell points out, Levene has fought for choice and competition in defence procurement before now – so we have an idea of where his review will head – but, for the time being, it’s still

With today being the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, I thought I’d excavate The Spectator’s leading article from the time:    A Crisis of Civilisation, The Spectator, 10 August, 1945 In Mr Churchill’s statement about the atomic bomb issued by Mr Attlee on Sunday exultation at having anticipated the enemy gave way to awe. Mr Churchill spoke of this “revelation of the secrets of Nature” as one “long mercifully withheld from man.” So terrific a power of destruction is now known to be in the hands of the Allies that in retrospect we can see that the race between the scientists threatened to be the decisive factor in