THE TELEGRAPH: The modern world is looking very dangerous – we need defence more than an overseas aid budget, says Simon Heffer.
As the Trades Union Congress seeks to lose Labour the next election even more heavily than it lost the last one, by promising general strikes and a mindless and bankrupting commitment to spending money Britain hasn't got, we should not lose sight of one point: that there are, indeed, certain cuts that would be most unwise. I think of one in particular, discussed in our pages yesterday by the former head of the Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt: the precipitate, reckless and little-short-of-insane cuts being planned for our Armed Forces.
The TUC and its satraps in the Labour Party pretend to oppose cuts because of the impact they would have on "public services". What they really mean is on "the jobs of our members". Many public services, notably in quangos, local government and even the untouchable National Health Service, harbour tens of thousands of members of the Brownite client state who are about as socially useful as a phial of arsenic. This is even true of defence, but only up to a point. It should, and must, be cut less than any other department. Most of the public would hardly register any difference in other public services if they had 25 per cent of their flab cut out of them. If it went from defence, our security would be imperilled for a generation. Sir Richard has made the case for restraint admirably; but forgive me if I add some further thoughts.
The Ministry of Defence has, to an extent, asked for this. It has about 85,000 civil servants, roughly the same as the total complements of the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force put together. One of the first places to start a clear-out is there. Such numbers of pen-pushers are unsustainable. Drastic reductions in this establishment are no doubt tabled for the meeting of the defence review now rescheduled for next week (it was to be on Friday but for the death of the Prime Minister's father). So they should be. As for the rest, as Sir Richard has outlined this week, it all depends on what we conceive the potential threats to the realm to be in the 10 or 15 years ahead. It also depends – and here we get to the love that dare not speak its name – what conception we choose to have of ourselves as a nation, and of our place in the world, over the next decade or two.
The question of threat is real rather than imagined. The world is more dangerous now than at any time since the early 1960s, when a vodka-powered Khruschev was up against the inexperienced Kennedy, and we waited for nuclear war to break out. We have chosen through Nato to align ourselves with other nations committed to the continuation of what we might loosely call Western civilisation. Inevitably, other nations regard this either as a standing affront to them or, in one or two cases, possibly even a target. Suppose either Israel attacks Iran or Iran attacks Israel. Forget the so-called special relationship, and forget conceptions of our place in the world. Where would our national interest lie in the event of such a terrible conflict being initiated, whoever the initiator, and irrespective of what America or Europe may think? Have our diplomats, not least our rather preoccupied Foreign Secretary, deemed and defined what our national interest now is? For it would be too late to do so once we have inadequate martial force to back it up. Would we be happy to sit and watch America and Islam fight a war without having the resources to exert influence – with either side – ourselves? Would we be happy to have our existing, meagre part reduced to nothing? For that is what is at stake. Read on and comment >>> Simon Heffer | Tuesday, September 14, 2010
