Tory Cuts and British Defence Policy

Friday, 29th May 2009

More riffing on Nelson! Fraser, that is. His Telegraph article and subsequent Coffee House post on future spending cuts argue that the Tories are, defensively, planning to leave the NHS budget untouched (and international development!) and that doing so will require 10% cuts across every other department. Including defence.

Since most people would, I think, accept that the armed forces are under-funded and over-stretched as it is, imposing further cuts surely and necessarily demands a reappraisal of current commitments and future capabilities. But do we hear anything of that from the Tories? I'm not sure we do. Indeed, Liam Fox's speech to the Scottish Tory conference suggested, as I wrote at the time, that Tory foreign and security policy was, essentially, much the same as the current ministry's - only with more money being spent. Furthermore, if Fox's absolute commitment to replacing Trident is honoured then, one imagines, other areas of the defence budget are likely to be squeezed still further. How sustainable is that?

So, then, will the Tories advocate withdrawal from Afghanistan? Or, to put it another way, in this New Age of Austerity, what the hell is Tory defence policy? For that matter, what's Tory foreign policy too? What, to put it yet another way, is the Tories view of Britain's place and role in the world? And, of course, these three questions cannot be considered seperately.

One rather gets the impression that, perhaps understandably, the Cameroons concentrate on domestic issues to the exclusion of these other issues. Granted, this is not where the election will be won and lost, but it is something a Conservaative government will have to deal with once it's in office.

That is, it seems improbable that existing British defence commitments - to say nothing of planning for future crises - can be met from existing resources, let alone survive a 10% cut in the MoD budget.

Filed under: Afghanistan (339 more articles) , Britain (736 more articles) , Defence (352 more articles) , Foreign Policy (318 more articles) , Tories (273 more articles)

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Mark Adrian Solomon

May 29th, 2009 6:38pm Report this comment

Glad to see someone somewhere is thinking ahead! The failure to do so last time, in 1979, meant the Tories got elected with really only an economic policy - with disastrous consequences in foreign and defence policy, the handing over of Rhodesia to the murderous Marxist Mugabe and the savage Knott defence cuts that sent the wrong signal and prompted Galtieri to invade the Falklands, where only an improbable victory reversed the cuts and saved the Tory government. We need to avoid this mistake this time.

The NHS budget needs to share the pain of a 10% cut, the Tories should be showing that cutting waste and inefficiency there will mean that the cut will not affect frontline services. And if altered circumstances require our withdrawal from Afghanistan then more the better as we should never have stayed on there once the Taliban government was overthrown - our continued presence just hastens its possible return.

DC needs to commit to renewing Trident and to building the two aircraft carriers otherwise the UK can kiss goodbye to its place in the world and claim to be a leading country more important than Italy, Spain or Germany. Savage cuts need to be made in the welfare budget and the whole structure of PC jobs and services instead. Radical surgery not tinkering and better management is needed - is Cameron up to the job?

A

May 30th, 2009 12:13am Report this comment

It seems clear. Let the Americans take the strain. MAKE the Germans take some of it. Stay in Afghanistan. Stay out of Iran.

Stay in NATO. And probably drop Trident.

All just sensible really.

Jono

May 30th, 2009 3:43am Report this comment

Yeah, yet another Labour problem for the Tories to solve.

Any suggestions, Massie? Any at all?

michael partington

June 20th, 2009 6:54am Report this comment

This is a problem that should never have risen we wouldn't be in such a dire state if the Gordon Brown led Treasury had funded the Armed forces. How can Defence be less important than Dfid we are giving aide to countries who are spending billions in arms deals.We need to Ring fence defence spending as a percentage of GDP (35) and take it out of governments control we should have a defence review every 5 years which is then acted upon by a perminant civil service in the MOD which is controlled by a defence review board we should never be in this position where a government puts back defence contracts to saddle the next government with the problem i.e the future carriers and signing up to projects like the A400m which we can't pull out of without massive penalties.

Jeremy Smyles

October 7th, 2010 9:37pm Report this comment

The policy on CHILD BENEFIT CUTS is a perfect example of a committee planning to design a horse and ending up with a camel. The tory's marriage to the LibDems doesn't seem working out.There is far too much compromise on every policy.This writer suggests a brief divorce while the Tories focus on our armed forces because we can't afford to compromise on defense. http://calamityanddodgy.blogspot.com/

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