Hurricane Irma rampaged through the Caribbean at the end of last week. With some 500,000 British nationals and several British dependencies sat in the hurricane’s path, Britain was always going to be deeply involved in the fall out.
In true British fashion, criticism of the response was quick to mount. Jeremy Corbyn claimed the UK ‘should have acted much faster’. Others, including senior MP’s from both parties, went as far as labelling the response ‘appalling’ and suggested the UK had been ‘caught out’.
But is such criticism valid? Brigadier John Ridge, Commander of the Joint Task Force – and the man in charge of Operation Ruman, the UK’s response to Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean – thinks not and he has hit back.
When I spoke to him, he described the unique and vast geographical and logistical challenges of the operation. ‘From Turks and Caicos to Barbados is almost 1000 miles,’ he said. The
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