At last, after months of phony war we are beginning to see some action. In one theatre, Cameron has already lost his nerve, prompting me to echo the mythical words of a senior cavalry officer writing a confidential report on a junior subaltern, "I would hesitate to breed from this officer!" I refer, of course, to his decision to go ahead with the building of two new naval carriers and I can only pause whilst I try to pick up my chin from my chest and ask, please, sir, what are they for? I mean, seriously, where are we intending to project our power? It was 'Field Marshal' Cameron, himself, who only last week bemoaned the fact that we had squadrons of heavy tanks ready to fight the Russians on the plains of northern Germany even though they haven't seen a Russkie since 1945! And now he decides to go ahead and build two carriers, enormous by our standards, pathetic by American, only one of which will be operational, and even that will be manned by hopelessly slow and out-dated aircraft.
And what, I ask, nay, I shout, has Liam Fox been doing for the last 2 or 3 years as shadow defence secretary? He was supposed to have really worked his way into the defence brief, to have tested and discarded different options, and prepared himself to take hard decisions which our position between a mountain of financial rocks and a myriad of hard places is desperately needed. Instead we find he is a glove puppet for the admirals, of whom, I would hazard a guess, there are at least 80% too many, and has given them their big toys to play with which means that there must be a reduction in their small toys, the frigates whose armaments these days makes them worth in fire-power terms the equivalent of about 5 old-style battlehips. In addition, they are actually useful for protecting trade routes against piratical ravages, as well as offering excellent mobile anti-missile platforms to protect Britain.
Some, of a more cynical/realistic frame of mind, like David Blackburn at The Coffee House, think that part of Cameron's decision is based on the fact that a cancelation would cause a huge lay-off of workers in the Clyde, however, none of them is ever likely to vote for Cameron even if the ships are built, so why bother? A commenter in Blackburn's thread reports a typical piece of Brown (and no doubt Balls) cunning in that the contracts for the two carriers contain a clause which states that if the government rats on the deal they must spend at least the same amount of money on some other type of shipping - the Scotch mafia strikes again!
Anyway, Cameron has failed his first test and now we must wait glumly to see how he fares on the others. I just hope that Osborne, Gove and Duncan-Smith have done better with their plans - but I will not be holding my breath.
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