This weekend has not been a masterclass in political communications by the government. Selected morsels of the Strategic Defence Review were dropped over several days, concluding with an anodyne launch by the prime minister at BAE Systems in Govan. The result: the prime minister and the defence secretary contradicting each other on defence spending, a rightly furious tirade from the speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, for neglecting Parliament and an urgent question from the Opposition. They are not good at this.
The SDR was never going to be a radical reassessment of Britain’s place in the world
It is plainly unacceptable that some journalists had sight of the full text of the SDR five hours before Members of Parliament could obtain copies. But is the 144-page review itself, emetically subtitled ‘Making Britain Safer: secure at home, strong abroad, the defence moment of a generation’ an actual ‘plan for transformation’, as Defence Secretary John Healey told the House of Commons?
Nae danger, as my Glaswegian grandmother would have said.
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