Bit weird. Hard to work out what the point of it all was. A word salad of the obvious. Rishi Sunak’s speech this week to the Policy Exchange think tank, I mean.
It sounded like a children’s bedtime story without a comforting they-lived-happily-ever-after while at the same time sort of promising a happy ending. The message was there are big, bad wolves out there and we must put our faith in the PM as the woodcutter come to save us.
The apocalyptic tone was appropriate. In the original version of the fairy tale we never get to find out what happened to Little Red Riding Hood. Maybe she was eaten, maybe not. Maybe we’ll be gobbled up by the authoritarian axis of Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. Or maybe not.
This is not the first time Rishi Sunak has given an address to the nation which was distinctly odd. Remember when George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election and a lectern appeared outside the No10 door?
Sunak tried to frighten voters into thinking Starmer cannot be trusted with defence, Nigel Nelson claims
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Political journos were on tenterhooks waiting to see if the government crest was missing (which would have meant a snap General Election). But it was there (which meant not). Sunak had merely gone to a lot of trouble to tell us how awful Galloway was. The point of doing so was unclear. Weird.
This week’s outing was to frighten voters into thinking Keir Starmer cannot be trusted with the defence of the Realm on the basis he will not commit to spending 2.5 per cent of our GDP on it.
The PM has. At an extra cost of £20billion by 2030, though he is a little vague how this will be funded. No10 says firing a few civil servants and raiding the UK’s research budget should do the trick. This has worried voters. An Ipsos poll today showed that while four in 10 support more defence spending, 52 per cent are not confident the taxpayer will get good value for money.
But Britain’s defences are not simply about spending money; more important is what you spend it on. Which is why Starmer wants a Strategic Defence Review first.
Sunak is right that the world is changing and the threats against us are changing with it. But we can’t afford everything, so the choice must be between fewer nuclear weapons and more conventional forces or the other way round.
It is difficult to see how the Army could be cut any further from the 75,000 troops we now have, the lowest number since the Napoleonic Wars. The Royal Artillery is short of guns because so many have gone to Ukraine, and our fleet of 227 Challenger tanks will be down to 148 by 2027. But at least the Navy is to get six more multi-role support ships equipped with drones and laser weapons for the Royal Marines to play with.
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'This is not the first time Rishi Sunak has given an address to the nation which was distinctly odd'
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The question now is whether the Army needs beefing up to fight the kind of European war against Russia Ukraine is now engaged in. That’s why we need a defence review to provide the answer.
For the past 30 years our four Trident nuclear submarines - Vanguard, Victorious, Vengeance and Vigilant - have provided us with the ultimate security blanket.
Unlike nuclear bombers, which were scrapped in 1998 because the enemy can see them coming, subs can beetle along underwater and with their unlimited range pop up undetected anywhere. Each boat has the destructive power of eight Hiroshimas.
Under CASD - Continuous At-Sea Deterrence - one sub is always out and about somewhere, and not even the sailors on board know where they are, where they are going, or where they have been. Another boat is on standby, a third on training exercises while the fourth is parked in a garage being serviced.
The Vanguard Class submarines are about to be replaced by Dreadnaughts. It is a hugely expensive programme costing as much as £200bn in all. Any money saved could be spent on conventional flashbangs instead.
Starmer wants a Strategic Defence Review first
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In 2010 the Royal United Services Institute said we could cut the number of boats from four to three - or even two if there was no longer any need to maintain CASD.
By the 2015 election Labour was also thinking along those lines, and pledged a defence review had they got into government.
The then shadow Chancellor Ed Balls said: “My job is to ask questions and we’re going to challenge to see whether there’s any way you could do it with three (boats) rather than four.
“I think many of the experts think in the end not, but it’s a good thing for us to do, to ask the difficult questions.”
If Keir Starmer becomes PM you can be sure his Chancellor Rachel Reeves will be asking those same questions, too.