Think Defence hopes to start sensible conversations about UK defence issues, no agenda or no campaign but there might be one or two posts on containers, bridges and mexeflotes!
14 thoughts on “A Stonking Article from Simon Heffer”
jackstaff
A few general thoughts on the problem, as much or more than Heffer’s article:
- This has, I think most to do with two political motives that predictably have not much to do with giving sweet FA about national defence. The first is Camerborne’s desire (the Tory celebrity couple?) for Liam Fox’s political pelt. Fox, whatever his other flaws and virtues, has shown a roaring case of foot-in-mouth disease, both on the C2s in Germany (which sounds depressingly like Richards of Freetown’s sweet nothings in his ear) and staking his ministerial brief on not paying for Trident out of MoD’s share where a microphone could hear him. The other is Osborne’s innate desire to do as many right-liberal Chancellors have done for 150 years before him (at least since the right of the Liberals took shape and classical-liberal Conservatives began to infuse and replace the pre-industrial Tories), namely write budgets that serve the interests of the financial-services sector almost exclusively. This is especially understandable since Osborne was literally born into that world. Cuts all round, political rivals hewn down with them when they protest, protect the boss’ image with his most potentiallly fractious partners (the Lib Dems) so you can get his job one day, and then a familiar refrain played from the right side of the orchestra: give the Square Mile Casino whatever they want because when they do well, we can tax them for our pet projects. Forget the security of a more balanced economy, less vulnerable to external shocks, or to siege if state-on-state ever returns, and with more reliable contributors to the tax base rather than spending a huge chunk of the budget essentially bribing the permanently unemployable. It seems to me we’ve heard the Blair-Brown tune before ….
- There’s a straightforward solution to keeping the deterrent without Rolls Royce subs. We’ve rehashed it here several times (modded Astute SSGNs.) And when you build enough of them, you have more potential carriers for an after-Trident deterrent if the world security situation really goes south.
- I worry about whether this will play into the awful old inter-service game. It’s clear Tornado and possibly FSTA are obvious cost-savings targets (quite understandably in both cases, though the odd Francophilia of many senior Cameronites — I won’t insult the old regiment with another suffix — may save FSTA.) Also plenty of big naval projects that have large procurement pricetags. (Large tags in part because of toothless British anti-trust laws that let BAe eat as much of the diversified defence industry as possible, adding incestuous public-private layers of bureaucracy and defence inflation that helps pay for the takeovers. If anyone but fellow nerds got it I’d make up T-shirts that said “Free Occupied Vosper-Thorneycroft!” and “Free Occupied Alvis!” and sell them on the web.) So when you have a new, Army-reared CDS whose sincere and profoundly mistaken vision of all future warfare is Agile Warrior skulking on street corners in proxy wars around the globe, this may be a useful catastrophe. Especially since a substantial and well-equipped RN and RAF would actually be more useful to defending substantive national interests that *can* be defended and advanced by military force rather than other means. But there’s irony for you.
- /start rant
Like military procurement, DFID is an inexcusable frakking disaster. You want effective, democratic, reasonably honest development aid aimed at actual people? (Which I think is both a good and a necessary goal; like Jed I have no quarrel with aid when it does what it says on the tin, but this system does almost exactly the opposite of that.) Then microlend. Staff it lean, set it up as a development bank run by HMG and (irony again) let the most mouth-frothing civil liberties advocates on the back benches write the transparency rules. No hiding stuff. If private charities can crowdsource that kind of thing then come on, chaps. Likewise within the UK: want to reestablish the kind of economic breadth both in defence-industrial policy and general R&D/manufacturing that you’d like? Tax the financiers for the right to play in London/Edinburgh/Leeds and put the dosh in a development lending institution. Lack of proper funding for project development (usually skived off by companies to pay protection money to their investors before there’s any reasonable business-model expectation for turning a big profit) has nobbled British industry for decades. Work around it. Enough handouts, picking winners, etc. Lend on condition of robust, sound, development strategies and back your honest customers because they’re key to a prosperous future.
/rant over
Only some of all that is probably applicable here, but I suspect there’s more spleen to be vented on this from other quarters and look forward to hearing it.
Jed
What surprised me was the vapid crap being spouted in the comments section of the article. No one as literate or able to create well constructed articles or comments as our Admin and Jackstaff – just “joe public” slinging shit at each other.
Is that part of the problem ? Is politics really so bad, and seemingly out of control, because the general population really cares about nothing except “Britain’s Next Top Model (TM)” ?
A friend in the UK wrote on FB today about this guy Moat from the North East who shot 3 people, and then himself and is perversely being hailed as some kind of hero for giving the cops the runaround – does this really represent the modern Britain ? (Keep in mind I decided to bring my child up in Canada!)
Nicely put; a scent of death indeed. And a reminder that, love them or lump them, the Conservative Party are the acknowledged masters of Cabinet-level knife fights. (Labour, by contrast, tend to ruin themselves through aggro amongst the groundlings.) Per the article, from my point of view Hague has a point, so long as a “leaner Army” is not just Richards’ high-tech warrior caste (bad idea, turning a professional modern military into one of those), contains at least one quite substantial “legacy” armoured brigade (and a second, at full to&e, in the TA), and yields a strong RN and regenerative capacity for a strong (but Article 5 focused) RAF. But that’s all out in the wash if Fox does indeed have the political nous of a side of mutton.
Given his historic (and ironic) passion for defence issues, it might be nice if daddy (e.g. Lord Heseltine) came down from the family manse in the Lords and sorted out his underwhelming heirs.
DominicJ
I dont know why I dont read the heffalumps more often
it may oddly enough force some unanimity on the service chiefs, for an additional £15-£20 billion cut would knacker them all on top of the 17% cut likely to be imposed by the boy Osborne.
Jed
Cue Dads Army “were dooooomed, doomed I tell ye”
jackstaff
Jed,
I miss John Laurie. Fox is starting to seem a bit like Lance-Corporal Jones, though, doddering on about “the old cold steel” while Osberon, whose tactical skill at politics seems to stretch to “Look, your shoelaces are untied,” set him up for a pratfall. (They wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes against the bottom tier of Harold Macmillan’s Cabinet, and Thatcher’s might actually have eaten them with bread sauce.)
JBT,
I wish it would. At it might force unity on the service chiefs, but I still fear their uniformed boss (Richards) may see a chance to dish his two rival services and their high-priced arsenals.
Jed again,
A side note: did you know dear old Pvt. Godfrey (both the character and the real-life actor who portrayed him) was a hero of the Somme, where he was permanently disabled (lost the use of an arm, blackouts) by gunfire and shrapnel? The old teddy bear was the toughest of the bunch.
We were always going to get an army man as the next CDS, it makes political sense given that the coalition has said that A-stan is its highest priority.
Conversely, if your Defence review is going to see a lot of cuts to the Army it is good management practice to make sure there is an army man in charge of that process.
And at any rate, it is ministers and secretary’s who will make the decisions in the end, not the CDS, and Fox appears to have some very definite ideas on what he wants to get out of this process, so Richards may have less room for manoeuvre than you fear.
jackstaff
JBT,
Your lips to MoD’s ears. It’s true that Mountbatten was CDS during most of the serious maneuvering to drop CVA-01 for example, likewise Lewin during Nott’s pre-Falklands planning. (I’m sure there are commensurate values for the Army, possibly Inge wrt Options for Change? Not as many thus far for the RAF though.)
Pete Arundel
“What surprised me was the vapid crap being spouted in the comments section of the article. . . just “joe public” slinging shit at each other.”
What do you expect, Jed? As the George Carlin once said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “You know how dumb the average member of the public is? Well, statistically, fifty percent of them are even dumber than that”. It’s not that politics is out of control it’s the fact that not enough people care or understand the importance of it. Unlike most people, I don’t think that politicians are evil. I think they’re human and therefore often wrong!
Part of the problem is also down to the fact that modern communications are so good. Take the Moat was a Hero crap. Once upon a time we just wouldn’t have known about these morons but, thanks to the World Widw Web they now have the opportunity to outrage people anywhere in the world – even Canada. The world is not going to hell in a hand cart – we just have access to more poeple who are telling us that it is . . . .
Jed
Very true Pete, very true. Current crop of politicians may not be ‘evil’ but are certainly seem to fall into that 50 % of “dumber”…
Lord Jim
One thing I would like to see is, with a few obvious exceptions, the budgets for all Government departments made public in a straight forward and easy to understand manner. The small details can be available as well but I think if the “Public” could see where the money is spent they may have a greater understanding for example of where money is wasted, not actually spent or needed.
People rage if there is a suggestion the health budget for example is reduced but if they see where the cuts are comming and there effect without spin then they may decide that extra money is available for other departments including defence.
Trust is in short supply around Politicians at ther moment, this may help them, and make all depatments and the MPs who run them more transparent and accountable.
The other part to this would be to actually give Select Committees powers to influence departments and vet major spending issues and impose timeframes and step objectives that must be met for further progress to be made. Many programmes last longer than a single parliament and so need to be managed more on a non-political basis. At first it is likeley to be a shouting match but I am sure once bedded dowm this system would bear fruit.
A few general thoughts on the problem, as much or more than Heffer’s article:
- This has, I think most to do with two political motives that predictably have not much to do with giving sweet FA about national defence. The first is Camerborne’s desire (the Tory celebrity couple?) for Liam Fox’s political pelt. Fox, whatever his other flaws and virtues, has shown a roaring case of foot-in-mouth disease, both on the C2s in Germany (which sounds depressingly like Richards of Freetown’s sweet nothings in his ear) and staking his ministerial brief on not paying for Trident out of MoD’s share where a microphone could hear him. The other is Osborne’s innate desire to do as many right-liberal Chancellors have done for 150 years before him (at least since the right of the Liberals took shape and classical-liberal Conservatives began to infuse and replace the pre-industrial Tories), namely write budgets that serve the interests of the financial-services sector almost exclusively. This is especially understandable since Osborne was literally born into that world. Cuts all round, political rivals hewn down with them when they protest, protect the boss’ image with his most potentiallly fractious partners (the Lib Dems) so you can get his job one day, and then a familiar refrain played from the right side of the orchestra: give the Square Mile Casino whatever they want because when they do well, we can tax them for our pet projects. Forget the security of a more balanced economy, less vulnerable to external shocks, or to siege if state-on-state ever returns, and with more reliable contributors to the tax base rather than spending a huge chunk of the budget essentially bribing the permanently unemployable. It seems to me we’ve heard the Blair-Brown tune before ….
- There’s a straightforward solution to keeping the deterrent without Rolls Royce subs. We’ve rehashed it here several times (modded Astute SSGNs.) And when you build enough of them, you have more potential carriers for an after-Trident deterrent if the world security situation really goes south.
- I worry about whether this will play into the awful old inter-service game. It’s clear Tornado and possibly FSTA are obvious cost-savings targets (quite understandably in both cases, though the odd Francophilia of many senior Cameronites — I won’t insult the old regiment with another suffix — may save FSTA.) Also plenty of big naval projects that have large procurement pricetags. (Large tags in part because of toothless British anti-trust laws that let BAe eat as much of the diversified defence industry as possible, adding incestuous public-private layers of bureaucracy and defence inflation that helps pay for the takeovers. If anyone but fellow nerds got it I’d make up T-shirts that said “Free Occupied Vosper-Thorneycroft!” and “Free Occupied Alvis!” and sell them on the web.) So when you have a new, Army-reared CDS whose sincere and profoundly mistaken vision of all future warfare is Agile Warrior skulking on street corners in proxy wars around the globe, this may be a useful catastrophe. Especially since a substantial and well-equipped RN and RAF would actually be more useful to defending substantive national interests that *can* be defended and advanced by military force rather than other means. But there’s irony for you.
- /start rant
Like military procurement, DFID is an inexcusable frakking disaster. You want effective, democratic, reasonably honest development aid aimed at actual people? (Which I think is both a good and a necessary goal; like Jed I have no quarrel with aid when it does what it says on the tin, but this system does almost exactly the opposite of that.) Then microlend. Staff it lean, set it up as a development bank run by HMG and (irony again) let the most mouth-frothing civil liberties advocates on the back benches write the transparency rules. No hiding stuff. If private charities can crowdsource that kind of thing then come on, chaps. Likewise within the UK: want to reestablish the kind of economic breadth both in defence-industrial policy and general R&D/manufacturing that you’d like? Tax the financiers for the right to play in London/Edinburgh/Leeds and put the dosh in a development lending institution. Lack of proper funding for project development (usually skived off by companies to pay protection money to their investors before there’s any reasonable business-model expectation for turning a big profit) has nobbled British industry for decades. Work around it. Enough handouts, picking winners, etc. Lend on condition of robust, sound, development strategies and back your honest customers because they’re key to a prosperous future.
/rant over
Only some of all that is probably applicable here, but I suspect there’s more spleen to be vented on this from other quarters and look forward to hearing it.
What surprised me was the vapid crap being spouted in the comments section of the article. No one as literate or able to create well constructed articles or comments as our Admin and Jackstaff – just “joe public” slinging shit at each other.
Is that part of the problem ? Is politics really so bad, and seemingly out of control, because the general population really cares about nothing except “Britain’s Next Top Model (TM)” ?
A friend in the UK wrote on FB today about this guy Moat from the North East who shot 3 people, and then himself and is perversely being hailed as some kind of hero for giving the cops the runaround – does this really represent the modern Britain ? (Keep in mind I decided to bring my child up in Canada!)
Looks like the telegraph has picked up on the scent of death that hangs around Fox:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/7925231/Trident-is-too-important-to-play-politics-with.html
JBT,
Nicely put; a scent of death indeed. And a reminder that, love them or lump them, the Conservative Party are the acknowledged masters of Cabinet-level knife fights. (Labour, by contrast, tend to ruin themselves through aggro amongst the groundlings.) Per the article, from my point of view Hague has a point, so long as a “leaner Army” is not just Richards’ high-tech warrior caste (bad idea, turning a professional modern military into one of those), contains at least one quite substantial “legacy” armoured brigade (and a second, at full to&e, in the TA), and yields a strong RN and regenerative capacity for a strong (but Article 5 focused) RAF. But that’s all out in the wash if Fox does indeed have the political nous of a side of mutton.
Given his historic (and ironic) passion for defence issues, it might be nice if daddy (e.g. Lord Heseltine) came down from the family manse in the Lords and sorted out his underwhelming heirs.
I dont know why I dont read the heffalumps more often
it may oddly enough force some unanimity on the service chiefs, for an additional £15-£20 billion cut would knacker them all on top of the 17% cut likely to be imposed by the boy Osborne.
Cue Dads Army “were dooooomed, doomed I tell ye”
Jed,
I miss John Laurie. Fox is starting to seem a bit like Lance-Corporal Jones, though, doddering on about “the old cold steel” while Osberon, whose tactical skill at politics seems to stretch to “Look, your shoelaces are untied,” set him up for a pratfall. (They wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes against the bottom tier of Harold Macmillan’s Cabinet, and Thatcher’s might actually have eaten them with bread sauce.)
JBT,
I wish it would. At it might force unity on the service chiefs, but I still fear their uniformed boss (Richards) may see a chance to dish his two rival services and their high-priced arsenals.
Jed again,
A side note: did you know dear old Pvt. Godfrey (both the character and the real-life actor who portrayed him) was a hero of the Somme, where he was permanently disabled (lost the use of an arm, blackouts) by gunfire and shrapnel? The old teddy bear was the toughest of the bunch.
We were always going to get an army man as the next CDS, it makes political sense given that the coalition has said that A-stan is its highest priority.
Conversely, if your Defence review is going to see a lot of cuts to the Army it is good management practice to make sure there is an army man in charge of that process.
And at any rate, it is ministers and secretary’s who will make the decisions in the end, not the CDS, and Fox appears to have some very definite ideas on what he wants to get out of this process, so Richards may have less room for manoeuvre than you fear.
JBT,
Your lips to MoD’s ears. It’s true that Mountbatten was CDS during most of the serious maneuvering to drop CVA-01 for example, likewise Lewin during Nott’s pre-Falklands planning. (I’m sure there are commensurate values for the Army, possibly Inge wrt Options for Change? Not as many thus far for the RAF though.)
“What surprised me was the vapid crap being spouted in the comments section of the article. . . just “joe public” slinging shit at each other.”
What do you expect, Jed? As the George Carlin once said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “You know how dumb the average member of the public is? Well, statistically, fifty percent of them are even dumber than that”. It’s not that politics is out of control it’s the fact that not enough people care or understand the importance of it. Unlike most people, I don’t think that politicians are evil. I think they’re human and therefore often wrong!
Part of the problem is also down to the fact that modern communications are so good. Take the Moat was a Hero crap. Once upon a time we just wouldn’t have known about these morons but, thanks to the World Widw Web they now have the opportunity to outrage people anywhere in the world – even Canada. The world is not going to hell in a hand cart – we just have access to more poeple who are telling us that it is . . . .
Very true Pete, very true. Current crop of politicians may not be ‘evil’ but are certainly seem to fall into that 50 % of “dumber”…
One thing I would like to see is, with a few obvious exceptions, the budgets for all Government departments made public in a straight forward and easy to understand manner. The small details can be available as well but I think if the “Public” could see where the money is spent they may have a greater understanding for example of where money is wasted, not actually spent or needed.
People rage if there is a suggestion the health budget for example is reduced but if they see where the cuts are comming and there effect without spin then they may decide that extra money is available for other departments including defence.
Trust is in short supply around Politicians at ther moment, this may help them, and make all depatments and the MPs who run them more transparent and accountable.
The other part to this would be to actually give Select Committees powers to influence departments and vet major spending issues and impose timeframes and step objectives that must be met for further progress to be made. Many programmes last longer than a single parliament and so need to be managed more on a non-political basis. At first it is likeley to be a shouting match but I am sure once bedded dowm this system would bear fruit.
Simon Heffer follows up with a cheeky jab
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/7930779/Nuclear-defence-is-not-a-subject-over-which-to-goof-off.html