BLAIR'S BIG QUESTION
And only last night shadow defence secretary Liam Fox attacked the Government's record, telling the WMN: "The Royal Navy believed they had escaped Labour's cuts in the Strategic Defence Review eight years ago. It's now clear that to finance their campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan the Government is looking to downsize the Navy, cutting our future capabilities and risking our ability to deal with new emerging threats.
"With the Sea Harriers already withdrawn, leaving a gap in our fleet protection and proposals on the table to reduce the number of vessels in the fleet, the Navy will have little left to defend British interests worldwide."
Good to see the
premature retirement of the Sea Harrier mentioned - it goes without saying that less ships means there will be less surfaced based defence, increasing the chance of something disasterous happening.
On local news last night, it was mentioned that Blair made much of "the largest shipbuilding programme for decades" (sic), citing the
Future Carriers. Now if they had actually been ordered/passed main gate this would have been a valid point, but they haven't.....