Defence

Four defences of free speech that everyone should read

Every generation, and individual, has to rediscover the arguments for free speech for themselves. Some people learn from major incidents. Some when the censors come for someone close to them, or an opinion that they hold. Others come to believe in free speech because they realise that while being offended on occasion might be terrible, it is nowhere near as terrible as any system designed to make being offended impossible. Fortunately there are short-cuts to finding the best defences of free speech. The English language provides an especially rich tradition on which to draw. From many centuries of literature allow me to list just four works: two classic, two modern.

Will Ben Wallace be allowed to turn on the defence spending taps?

Ben Wallace also has an Iran-shaped problem in his Defence in-tray. One of the complaints about the British government’s handling of the tanker crisis is that the Navy’s capacity is too thin. It is a long-established complaint from defence chiefs that there isn’t enough money for the Armed Forces, and they are now expecting Johnson to show his true blue Tory credentials by turning on the spending taps. Jeremy Hunt pledged during the leadership contest to double defence spending, and there has been a regular drumbeat from Tory backbenchers on the need to push spending up. The Joint Committee on the National Security has warned that ‘the cornerstones of UK

Jeremy Hunt shows some ankle with defence budget pitch

With Theresa May’s departure expected later this year, the race is underway among her Tory colleagues to position themselves as her likely successor. The weekend papers were filled with ministers at pains to prove their credentials – with Liz Truss calling for one million homes to be built on the green belt and Matt Hancock and Amber Rudd sparking rumours of a double ticket after they penned an article calling for a ‘modern, compassionate Conservative party’. On Monday evening Jeremy Hunt appeared to show some ankle of his own with a speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. Discussing Britain’s place in the world, the Foreign Secretary said the UK is held

Australia at the crossroads

 Sydney For decades, Australia has been known as ‘the lucky country’. At the end of the world geographically, we are separated from the global troublespots by vast oceans. We have recorded 27 years of uninterrupted growth, partly because of a surge in exports of commodities to China. At the same time, our tough border protection policies boost public confidence in, as John Howard put it, ‘who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’. As a result, our politics have not been profoundly affected by the kind of populist forces dismantling established parties across Europe. Nor have we witnessed an anti-globalisation backlash. Not for us any Trump-

Trump surprises Nato members with demand that they should spend 4% on defence

Donald Trump has demanded that Nato members spend four percent of their GDP on defence. He is proposing a doubling of the current Nato target of two percent. This is, obviously, a negotiating tactic: even the US doesn’t, currently, hit this 4 percent mark. I suspect that Trump’s real aim is to highlight how few Nato countries meet the two percent target, apart from the US only four others do. He would also like European countries to spend more so that the US can reduce its military commitments in Europe. But the way in which his request was presented, on a day in which he once again took a swipe

Defence of the realm

The Defence Select Committee called for the defence budget to be raised by £17 billion a year, from just over 2 per cent of GDP to 3 per cent. Some £35.3 billion was spent on defence in 2016/17. How much was allocated to particular operations? Wider Gulf £51m Afghanistan £70m Deployed Military Activity Pool (for unforeseen military activity) £23m Counter Daesh £432m Conflict stability and security fund (various peace-keeping activities) £87m EU counter migrant-smuggling ops £3m

A new world role for Britain

Britain’s imperial past distorts the debate about our place in the world, but not in the way that is commonly assumed. It is often asserted that claims about this country’s international importance are a form of nostalgia. It would be more accurate to say that Britain tends to underestimate its power because it is no longer the global hegemon. Britain might not be, in 1066 and All That terms, ‘top nation’ any more. On any objective reading, however, the United Kingdom is still an influential global player. It is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the sixth largest economy in the world, a nuclear weapons state, a member

What the papers say: Britain’s defence spending isn’t enough

A key part of Theresa May’s strategy for wooing Donald Trump was making it clear that Britain was pulling its weight with funding Nato, with the PM calling on other countries to match the two per cent of GDP that Britain spent on defence so ‘that the burden is more fairly shared’. The report from the International Institute for Strategic Studies that the UK had, in fact, missed this target was potentially explosive then – and it’s no surprise the MoD stepped in quickly to bat away the claims. But whether too much or too little, the amount of money spent on military matters is the talking point in many

The question for Stephen Crabb, can you go toe to toe with Vladimir Putin?

The Tory leadership hopefuls all appeared before a packed out 1922 hustings tonight. First up was Michael Gove. His pitch was that he had the conviction, the experience and the vision to lead the party and the country. He argued that the Tories’ aim should be to help those on £24,000 a year. Surprisingly, Gove wasn’t asked any questions about what had happened between him and Boris Johnson last week. However, he was asked twice about his former adviser Dominic Cummings. Gove said that Cummings would have no formal role in his Number 10. Gove was typically fluent, answering nine questions in the fifteen minutes allotted to him. He was

Inside the new Navy

The Royal Navy is known as the Senior Service because of its illustrious history; Francis Drake and all that. But the days when it ruled the waves have long gone. In 1945 it had almost 900 warships and a million men. By the time of the Falklands War it was down to 70 warships and 70,000 men. Now it is less than half that, with more admirals than there are fighting ships. The arrival this year of HMS Queen Elizabeth, the much-heralded new aircraft carrier that has cost £6 billion (for 50-odd years of life), will draw unwelcome attention to the Navy’s significant manpower shortages. As one senior officer put

Labour struggles to be an Opposition as MPs mock its Trident tribulations

Emily Thornberry might not know why Jeremy Corbyn made her Shadow Defence Secretary, but she will have known that this afternoon’s departmental questions for the Ministry of Defence was going to be a difficult session. She came armed with two questions that she knew few would listen to, and delivered them well. But for the rest of the session, she had to listen to MPs on all sides of the Commons attacking not the government of the day, but the policy of the Opposition party. In fact, the government was barely scrutinised at all today, so intense was the focus on Labour and its potential U-turn on Trident. Michael Fallon

Ken Livingstone makes Labour’s bad week even worse

Funnily enough, after Ken Livingstone told the Daily Politics that the defence review that he is co-chairing with the new Labour Shadow Defence Secretary Emily Thornberry would consider whether Britain will leave Nato, the party has issued a statement shooting down the former Mayor’s suggestion: ‘The terms of the defence review are still to be agreed but will not look at our membership of Nato.’ Livingstone said the following to the BBC: ‘That’s one of the things we will look at. There will be many people wanting to do that. I don’t think it’s a particularly big issue because in the Cold War it was; it isn’t now. Russia is

Portrait of the week | 26 November 2015

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, announced, as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review, plans for two 5,000-strong ‘strike brigades’ that could respond to terrorist attacks on Britain. Spending on defence would go up by £12 billion, keeping it above 2 per cent of GDP. The estimate for replacing Britain’s four Trident ballistic missile submarines rose from £25 billion to £31 billion. The Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, scrapped in 2010, would be replaced with nine Boeing P-8s. Aircraft for the Navy’s two new aircraft carriers would be ready by 2023. The government made preparations for a vote in the Commons in favour of Britain bombing Islamic State targets in Syria.

Labour MPs in despair at Corbyn’s ‘poor’ response to defence review

Labour MPs have had plenty of opportunities over the past few weeks to look miserable. But today the party looked its most miserable ever as Jeremy Corbyn responded to David Cameron’s statement on the Strategic Defence and Security Review. Even the frontbenchers, particularly Tom Watson, looked unhappy. Andy Burnham looked even more doleful than usual. On the backbenches, MPs such as Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint wore masks of agony. Chris Leslie had his arms crossed defensively, looking miserable. Diane Abbott appeared to be a little snoozy. Helen Goodman was slumped in her seat in what appeared to be despair. Labourites afterwards described the response as ‘poor’. It was poor: Corbyn

James Forsyth

Defence review: Cameron takes Corbyn to task over national security

David Cameron’s initial statement to the Commons on the Strategic Defence and Security Review was a rather high-minded affair. Cameron talked about how the world was an even more dangerous place now than it was in 2010 and conceded that governments can’t predict the future, and that you had to ‘expect the unexpected’ when it came to national security. But his reply to Corbyn’s rather rambling response – which went on so long that John Bercow felt obliged to tell the Labour leader to hurry up – was brutal. Cameron rattled off Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s greatest hits on national security as the Labour benches looked even

Cameron to make his case for war to the Commons next week

David Cameron will set out his case for air strikes against IS in Syria to the Commons late next week. Cameron is, as I say in my Sun column today, immensely frustrated by the current British position of only bombing Islamic State in Iraq and not Syria. But he knows that it would be politically back breaking for him to lose another Commons vote on a matter of war and peace, so is proceeding cautiously.   But last night’s UN resolution has strengthened Cameron’s hand. Even before that, 30 Labour MPs were certain to back Cameron on this issue and another 30 were highly likely to. With a UN resolution

Corbyn, Nero and the Bomb

Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nicholas Houghton is worried that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will never use the existing means of defence — Trident — to defend the country. Mr Corbyn is incandescent that a mere Chief of Defence Staff has the sheer effrontery to express a view on a matter that is (apparently) irrelevant to the defence of country but is purely political. One is reminded of the accession of Nero to Rome’s imperial throne in ad 54. According to the Roman historian Tacitus, it was dirty work by the controlling empress Agrippina that did for her husband Claudius, with the result that Nero, her son from an

Our policy towards Islamic State makes no sense

If Islamic State is a threat to Britain that requires a military response, then surely we should be attacking it on both sides of the Syrian/Iraqi border? Our current policy of only hitting it in Iraq, when its operation there is directed from Syria and resupplied from there, makes neither strategic nor moral sense. So, why is Britain not hitting Islamic State in Syria too? Well, that goes back to the legacy of 2013 and the Commons refusal to back bombing Syria then. But the truth is that bombing Islamic State in Syria is not the same as ‘bombing Syria’; it is hitting a terrorist group in a part of

A British ‘kill list’ does exist. We used it in Afghanistan

The following article is by an ex-serviceman who served in Afghanistan. They’re making a list, they’re checking it twice – and Number 10 will know whether you’ve been naughty or nice. And if you’ve been very naughty, you’d better watch out for a metallic glint in the sky. Britain doesn’t have anything called a ‘kill list’, but it does have something called ‘JPEL’ – whose existence the government will neither confirm nor deny. The ‘Joint Priority Effects List’ is not new, nor is the very use of such a list. As with Special Forces operations, the UK government – with good reason – will consistently refuse to comment on its existence. Intelligence work is

Michael Fallon: ‘Iraqi forces are slowly but surely beginning to push ISIL back’

Is the government set to bring bombing Islamic State terrorists in Syria before the Commons soon? The Defence Secretary Michael Fallon has announced that the RAF’s Tornado aircraft will be kept in service until 2017 for air strikes against the Islamic State, to ‘ensure we maintain this crucial operational tempo’. On the Today programme, Fallon explained that the aircraft have ‘proven their worth’ and have helped Iraqi forces in the fight against ISIL: ‘The Iraqi forces are slowly but surely beginning to push ISIL back. They have recaptured Tikrit, there is a campaign going on at the moment to liberate Ramadi. They are recruiting to both the army and to the