Getting back to the original thread, although demographic transition is undoubtedly of interest to someone, an interesting comment from Simon Heffer in today's Telegraph.
Indeed, one can't help but feel that Dave et al are actually more interested in generating and sustaining capable militaries in other countries rather than their own - after all, as Dave pointed out the other day, trade is vitally important. It also means that when you sell your own military down the river you can go to your chums for assistance and 'lease' your required capability from them. If defence is an insurance contract, I guess we have decided to do with out and look to hire or lease capability as and when required. It's a fine line between genius and madness!
The foolish cuts that leave us defenceless The ludicrous, hasty and ill-informed decision to cut defence so severely is one for which Dave and his Chancellor must take full responsibility, writes Simon Heffer.
Nothing I have written lately attracted a greater postbag than an article reflecting that Britain had chosen to cease to be a serious country, choosing to put welfare and a bloated public sector above engagement in the world and the willingness to defend ourselves properly. Most of you agreed; and perhaps the few who didn’t will reconsider your views after the farce of the Libyan evacuation this week.
Full credit to the Prime Minister for admitting the shambles he made of this: but what did he expect? Governing, for the inexperienced and callow people who now run our country, is about having power. They seem not just to be unsure of what to do with that power, but of what power actually requires them to do. It requires, not least, to have them protect British subjects going about their legal business in the world. Dave, though, was too busy on a photo-opportunity in Cairo, and his preposterous deputy thought his main responsibility lay in having a skiing holiday. He forgot he was in charge: if only the rest of us could.
Mr Hague, the Foreign Secretary, has seemed disengaged from reality since problems with his private life a few months ago. But he only had to try to whistle up charter flights to get our people out of Libya because the RAF is depleted and our Mediterranean fleet hardly exists. We have been reminded that we need reach in the world, because our people are very much out in it. An inability to protect them means we are not a serious country, and one that invites the contempt of its now immensely vulnerable citizens.
The senior officers who wrote to this newspaper yesterday about the idiotic nature of our defence cuts reinforced this point, unwittingly. Not only can we not protect ourselves against those who threaten our interests: we no longer have the forces to mount a simple rescue operation. I was told at the time that Mr Hague was urging support for the hard Treasury line against the Ministry of Defence when the cuts were discussed last year. If so, he is well and truly hoist with his own petard.
The defence review must be reopened. It has been established that money was wasted on procurement in the MoD; and the civil service establishment there was, and is, too large. But that is no reason to decommission Ark Royal, or our Harrier capability. The world is an exceptionally dangerous place, much more so than these foolish cuts admitted. For us to remain secure and to be able to protect our people we need more ships, more planes and more men and women under arms. The cuts always looked idiotic, and some of us said so at the time. They seem lethal now.
History tells us that the unexpected always happens: ask the ghosts of Baldwin and Chamberlain, who refused to expect the Second World War. Ministers will say that no one could have predicted this wave of instability in the Middle East and North Africa even last autumn, when the cuts were announced. That is true. But what any sensible politician could, and should, have planned for is that, one day, the unexpected would happen. That day has come quickly.
The ludicrous, hasty and ill-informed decision to cut defence so severely is one for which Dave and his Chancellor must take full responsibility. They chose to increase the overseas aid budget, which should have been abolished. They chose to ring-fence the NHS budget, which is full of waste. We await mass sackings of unproductive people in local government. All this would pay for our better defence, and save Dave from further humiliating apologies. He had better listen, for the world situation has every chance of getting much, much worse.