Since Liam Fox’s lawyers are busy, twitchy buggers I’ll make a point of saying I have no idea whether he’s guilty of much more than foolishness in this Adam Werrity business. Certainly, Fox does not lack for friends and he owes George Osborne a favour (to be cashed doubtless in the event of an Osborne tilt for the party leadership). He might also buy Jim Murphy a pint since yesterday the Shadow Defence Secretary inexplicably failed to target Fox’s “judgment”.
That said, if you judge a “scandal” by whether or not you think the accused should or would have to resign were he or she playing for the other team then I think honest Tories would have to admit that Fox is kippered now. If this were a Labour minister Tory MPs (and the Mail and Telegraph) would be running the Outrage Machine at full capacity. The game’s the game, yo.
Nevertheless, it is entirely typical of British politics that no-one appears to care about whether or not Liam Fox is an effective Secretary of State. The Werrity affair is not entirely trivial but it is much more trivial than the question of whether or not Fox is actually any good at his job. But this is Westminster and so this should not suprise. Last week, after all, we enjoyed a fine Catflap as part of which the minister who told the truth was supposed to be in danger of losing his job while the minister who, shall we say, misinformed the public was in the clear. Westminster: a crazy village, filled with more than a fair share of idiots and assorted other bumpkins.
So is Fox any good? Well, running the Ministry of Defence is one of the tougher assignments in government. Moreover, there is always some distance between what is promised from the comfort of opposition and what is delivered in the tougher arena of government. Even so, the gap between what Fox once promised and what he has delivered is perhaps unusually wide.
I don’t suppose, for instance, that the Defence Secretary enjoys being reminded that he promised he could cut the MoD’s budget by 25% without sacrificing any “frontline” capability. How’s that working out? And it was our intrepid Dr Fox who presided over a defence review that, whatever its other merits, will leave Britain in the curious position of owning aircraft carriers but no planes to fly from them.
Perhaps worst of all, we have endured the grotesque sight of a Conservative-led government – a Conservative government! – scurrying around delivering redundancy notices to servicemen and women on active duty. And since the government appears to be planning to cut the army by another 20% we’ve not seen the end of this.
You may say that these are examples of foolishness or awkward necessity. Maybe so. None of them – and one could mention some other examples – suggest a department at ease with itself, far less one with a clear view of what its future should be, nor even whether that future should be organised on a needs-based or money-run basis. One might be forgiven for thinking there’s a lack of clarity or strategic purpose at the centre of the MoD and, at some point, that must reflect poorly on the civilian leadership.
In general, David Cameron’s disinclination to sack ministers or shuffle them between departments is a good thing. It takes time to get to grips with the bloody messy business of government. But if you were grading ministers on their actual performance I’m not sure good Dr Fox would fare superbly. Not that this, in our political culture, has any impact on whether or not he should keep his job. That would be a ridiculous yardstick to use wouldn’t it?
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