Wallace Resigns as Minister for Defence
 

Ben Wallace has, as expected, resigned as Minister for Defence today.

Speculation in papers this morning as to his successor, with I would expect we will know by lunchtime. Rumour is Grant Shapps is front runner for the role.

https://www.politics.co.uk/news/2023...nce-secretary/

Ben Wallace formally resigns as Sunak hails ‘dedication and skill’ of former defence secretary

Ahh good ol' Grant - the man who airbrushed Boris out of a PR photo he used, Supposedly keeps detailed files on his colleagues for future use

Rumours of a cabinet re-shuffle today.
Ben will be sadly missed; best Minister of Defence (and most qualified) we've had for years.

He was the only hint of talent in a sea of mediocrity and worse.

You have my deepest sympathises if the boy wonder Shapps takes over. We had to suffer him when he was Transport Sec.

Certainly the best SoS potentially since Robertson 25 years ago. On top of his brief, prepared to admit past failures and not afraid to ask for more funds and to take hard decisions. While there's still lots to fix, you don't undo decades of overstretch and neglect in a couple of years. Compare and contrast with some of his predecessors.....

Buffhoon, Reid, Swiss Toni - the job-share SoS, Ainsworth, Fox, Fallon, Williamson.

I've omitted Hutton and Mordaunt on the basis they were both here today, gone tomorrow and Hammond was essentially brought in to make the hard decisions in SDSR2010. Once those were made he shifted aim to his real ambition.

ETA : Heappey might be the best shot for a replacement. He too "gets" defence, as did Alex Chalke.

BBC reporting Shapps

FFS................

Well,he has/had his own aircraft(N..REG),so he shouldn`t trouble 32 ....much...

Shapps? Heaven help us.

Likely to trouble Coningsby, I would have thought, for back seat rides.

On the face of it not great news. I had a lot of time for Wallace as DefSec. My only slight qualification to that is that Wallace's direct and straight talking approach - while something many including me welcomed and found refreshing - was not always the best approach in the world of diplomacy and also Whitehall manoeuvring. Again on the face if it, someone who knows the arse end of bugger all about defence has been appointed to avoid rocking the boat on issues such as defence funding. On the other hand, politically he is a relatively big figure in the pool of candidates and will want to be seen to be a success in the job, so the absence of direct public confrontation MIGHT not prove to be as bad as we might expect. OK I'm clutching at straws, but I'm also conscious that the world of politics is seldom black and white. And then of course there's the looming election...

Shapps......:eek:

Just beggers believe :ugh:
Perfect example of what happens when you let the lunatics run the asylum.

They should have put him in the treasury... From Wiki, one feels as though they have taken on a yes man and not a supporter of the military.

They can always advise him that Martin Baker has a two seat Meteor to try.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Shapps

An 'interesting' past history. hmmm.

Had it been a few days ago before Nadine was appointed to the Three Hundreds of Chiltern, it could have been Nadine.

Tell him that the ride will be over the North Sea so he will have to go through the Dunker first to qualify, then leave him in there
(I know it’s not for fast jet, but he doesn’t :E)

https://www.politico.eu/article/gran...aker-us-rules/

The man that said taking us out of EASA was going.to make us world beating. He is an A hole.

Shapps is a real Vicar of Bray - he slides behind whoever is in power

By giving him Defence he's been given a bit of a poison chalice - but expect "Self promotion" on a vast scale - probably as bad as Heseltine I think