Carrier supporters should be less worried about the flaws in Sir Max’s screed and more concerned by the timing and nature of its publication: in a Conservative mouthpiece just one day after an election victory which has altered the political landscape. I will make the same point that I did in this thread a few months ago: Boris’s senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, is
on record (do a text search for ‘aircraft carrier’) with almost exactly the same views as Sir Max on the carriers and Defence acquisition in general.
[A digression: after making my earlier point I was taken to task by pr00ne for my assessment of Cummings’s influence, with Brexit then being fought over in Parliament and the courts. But Cummings had a winning strategy sussed while those tactical and procedural battles raged, as should now be clear to all but the most stubborn. #classicdom indeed.]
Back on thread. Defence spending is unlikely to change much from 2% GDP given other priorities facing the new Government. Many will have noticed that Johnson/Cummings understand all too well the electoral potency of schools, police and the NHS, while the Tories’ newly-minted northern electorate probably cares a lot more about infrastructure investment than about overseas interventions of the sort which originally precipitated the carrier requirement. Staying at 2% GDP might even be a real-terms cut if the worst Brexit predictions come true and are projected forward, so any SDSR is likely to be about re-slicing the existing pie and not about who gets extra helpings. This matters for the MOD because the black hole in the equipment budget is well on the way to being open once more, and that matters for the carriers because their groups and air wings are a long way from being fully funded.
When controversial decisions loom, it’s the spin doctor’s job to prepare soft landings for likely outcomes. I see Sir Max’s article as an example of the genre. And as I sit here typing this post, the morning paper review on Radio 4 is saying that Monday’s Times will carry an article on how the MOD will be one of the first departments in Cummings’s crosshairs as he gets stuck into his Whitehall reform agenda. With that near-real-time affirmation of my thesis, I shall leave it there.