I couldn’t disagree more with Asturias’ opinion that Gavin Williamson was just: “Another useless UK career politician who can't tell the difference between his own career and the UK's interest.” I’d also argue with Racedo and Onceapilot, and would tend to agree with Nutloose and Proone.
One of the perks of being a defence journo is that one gets to meet many Defence Ministers and senior officers.
In some cases all one gets is an opportunity to ask the odd question within a huddle of politician/officer, minders, and hacks. In other cases one gets a hurried chat. Occasionally you get the chance for a longer sit down one-on-one chat. At the other end of the spectrum there are politicians you see and hear but can’t engage with - Geoff Hoon seemed very keen to avoid any contact with journalists at all!
A journo’s contact with any Defence Secretary is not enough to claim great insight or knowledge, but it can be enough to form an impression.
Since I started working in this field full time, there have been ten Tory Defence Secretaries and six Labour, plus countless junior Ministers. I’ve properly met about eight of them, and watched and questioned a few more.
John Reid struck me as being very in command of his brief, knowledgeable and professional, while the floor-crossing Quentin Davies was also incredibly knowledgeable about defence, and had great personal charm. They seemed to be ‘better friends to defence’ than some Tory Secretaries of State and Ministers.
Phil Hammond was an incredibly professional operator – so in command of his brief that he seemed relaxed and self confident even when dealing with the kind of really granular detail that I would not have expected him to know about. And he was another really charming and friendly, open and approachable chap.
It’s easy to sneer at Williamson – he didn’t seem to have that ‘Eton and Oxford polish’ that many senior politicians have (whether they went to those institutions or not), and seemed to have trouble with the digraph ‘th’, sometimes substituting an ‘f’ or ‘v’ which doesn’t matter, but which gives an impression of not being well educated. His well publicised howlers (telling the Russians to shut up and go away, etc.) were embarrassing, and his boyish enthusiasm could sometimes get in the way. At the F-35B/Centurion IOC announcement, for example, his insistence on speaking off the cuff, without notes, meant that he failed to actually announce anything, leading to an undignified scrabble to do so by senior officers and press minders after his speech. You never got the feeling that he had a surgically incisive brain, nor a particularly detailed command of every element of his brief.
But after speaking to him, I was left in no doubt as to his genuine enthusiasm for defence, his keenness to evangelise for it, and his willingness to fight tooth and nail to get his department every penny that it needed and to oppose the Treasury. He seemed to appreciate the extraordinary calibre of our servicemen, and even to be slightly in awe of them (something I share!), and he seemed to have a real appreciation of the many threats facing us.
There sometimes seems to be a tendency among senior officers and politicians to pursue the procurement of particular high profile, high tech weapons systems – almost as though they want their legacy to be ‘the CAS or Defence Secretary who got the RAF the Scruggs Wonderplane’ – while presiding over cuts to force structure. Williamson seemed to have a real understanding of the vital importance of mass – of the need for more bayonets, more ships and more squadrons.
He is clearly an ambitious young man, but he was the first Defence Secretary I’ve met who didn’t seem to view Defence as being merely a toe hold for a long ascent of the greasy pole, and the first who might have been willing to put the interests of his department ahead of career and self interest.
I’d be VERY surprised if Ms Mordaunt was anything like as pro-defence as Williamson, or as willing to fight its corner, and I therefore very much regret his removal.
Melchett pointed out an interesting tendency for Defence to be viewed as being a relatively unimportant brief, nowadays, citing Penny Morduant’s retention of her position as Minister for Women.
This is nothing new. Wasn’t George Robertson given Defence to make up for his disappointment of not getting Scotland?