Just been watching Liam Fox on the Andrew Marr show in which he asked Liam Fox if the Trident replacement would be in the core budget or not, pretty straightforward question.
Were you expecting a straight answer?
Here is what he said
There has always been an understanding that the budget for the nuclear deterrent came from outside the defence budget, the core defence budget, running costs for the detterent have alwas come from inside the defence budget although the capital costs were outside so thats something which are discussing in the run up to the spending review
Sniffing a bit of nonsense Andrew Marr stopped him and asked for a clarifiation,, in or oout
To take the capital costs would make it very difficult to maintain what we are currently doing in terms of capabilities so there is an ongoing debate, as you know, with the Treasury on almost every aspect of the government at the present time
Andrew Marr then asked another straightforward question
If you had to take the capital costs of Trident inside your defence budget what would that mean for things like the army?
The response was less than convincing
Thats rather impossible to say
After a discussion about how the defence review will proceed Andrew Marr comes back again on the question of Trident and the core budget
If you had to take that capital cost and it seems me that it is still up for debate, you may have to to that, then the implications for Trident and the rest of the defence budget are extremely grave
Bloody too right Andrew
Well I think you can leave that to me and the Chancellor to have a discussion about that over the longer period
He then went on to discuss Cold War legacies and cyberspace
Anyone convinced?
Not convinced. The facts are that a.)Like all politicians he refuses to answer straight questions with straight answers and b.)he seems to have no idea about what the heck is going on. To not be able to illustrate the impact of budget cuts on the Army is all I need to know that he really is out of his depth…not better or worse than most other Defense ministers of recent times mind, but basically not equipped expertise wise for the job. Whats going to end up happening is quite predictable, Trident won’t be in the capital costs of the defense budget, but the defense budget itself will be slashed to oblivion to pay for it anyway so it might as well be…In the end the services themselves will be left with the choice of what they can or cannot operate. The RAF has done a damn fine PR job with preemptive cut offers but as a practical matter all of the cuts will end up costing more in the long term as cancelled contracts and capability gaps will take their toll. Sad state of affairs but nothing new for now…
‘To not be able to illustrate the impact of budget cuts on the Army is all I need to know that he really is out of his depth’
How is he going to answer a question like that in a few sentences and why would he when a defence review is currently underway?
that trident is funded from some mythical none defence pot is a bit of a joke anyway.
We dont have a set defence budget, the government agrees to fund certain projects based on ‘need’, if theres a ‘need’ for education, the government funds it, if theres a ‘need’ for air defence destroyers, the government funds them and if theres a need for CASD the government funds it.
Much as i would argue 3% of gdp fixed defence budget would be better, its not what we have now
If the nuclear deterrent replacement costs are not funded as a separate entity then its GAME OVER as I said in my comment on the other comment thread. However as Ron and Dominic have already alluded to the actual defence budget will still feel the pain even if the decision is taken to fund it separately to say otherwise would be lunacy. If the Government wants a deterrent they will have to pay for it and they cannot realistically do so from the core defence budget so as Dominic suggests they will find the money.
Deterrent budget is separate, or not at all !
A nuclear deterrent is a political capability, not really a military one.