Defence

As NATO leaders gather for a key summit in Lisbon, expect the newspapers to be full of the usual “why bother” commentary. NATO, they will argue, was founded for a different age and is not relevant for dealing with today’s threats – from cyber-attacks to nuclear non-proliferation. It is even struggling to deal with older threats, such as the Taliban insurgency. Most Europeans do not seem to mind. They feel safer than at any time before and worry predominantly about post-material threats, not conventional attack, as a think tank report showed recently. As a result, Europeans are set to spend less on defence. Germany expert Hans Kundnani has an excellent

There is no sign of the heir to Blair at the Commons Liaison Committee this afternoon; in fact, David Cameron has been possessed by the ghost of Gordon. So far the Prime Minister’s answers have been cumbersome and statistic-heavy; and his delivery has had the dexterity of a three-legged elephant. He will have expected cannons to the left of him, but to the right as well? If he imagined that Tory backbenchers would coo appreciatively he will have been sadly disabused. Andrew Tyrie, James Arbuthnot and Bernard Jenkin have eviscerated him over the conduct of the strategic defence review. They deplored the culture of leaks and counter-briefing and probed Cameron

William Hague told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee that British combat troops will leave Afghanistan in 2015 – even if parts of the country remain violent. Speaking to a number of senior military officers and civilians who have recently returned from Kabul and Helmand, I have come away with the clear sense – whisper it – that the tactical tide is in fact turning against the Taliban insurgency but that a number of facts will complicate further progress. First, the next few months in Helmand may unfortunately be quite bloody. The drop in British casualties over the summer has made the story disappear from the newspaper headlines but most military

Keen-eyed spectators might have noticed Danny Alexander and Michael Gove wearing a slightly different type of poppy over the last few days: the Scottish Poppy. At the beginning of the poppy-wearing season they are for sale at the Scottish Office in Whitehall and are worn by certain Scots down here – any money that Andrew Marr will be wearing one on Sunday, for example.   What’s the difference? Scots poppies have four petals, and no green leaf.  The English version costs a little more to produce, and – one might argue – looks more sophisticated. But the Scots version can claim to be anatomically correct, because poppies don’t have green

Is David Cameron just too nice? There are worse accusations to levy at a politician, but it’s one I have heard suggested quite a lot recently – and I have written about it in my News of the World column today. He seems to have adopted the politics of wishful thinking. There is a “zip-a-dee-do-dah strategy” and precious little contingency if things go wrong. He makes defence cuts, because he doesn’t intend to go on a massive deployment (neither did Woodrow Wilson). He will make prison cuts, because he thinks – bless him – that it won’t increase crime. He signs a deal with French for military co-operation, thinking they

The Entente Cordial Redux has generated a lot of commentary, most of it ill-informed, some of it ridiculous. Tory MP Bernard Jenkin, in particular, has singled himself out to be a perpetuator of stereotypes with his reference to the duplicitous nature of the French. But many historians, like the otherwise brilliant Orlando Figes, have not fared much better, talking about the Crimea War as if it had any relevance at all for modern warfare. It’s good fun to tease the French. That is what boozy lunches ought to be about. But it should not pass for serious commentary by MPs. Since the 1990s the French have worked very closely with

Today is one of those days when you can’t walk around the Palace of Westminster without bumping into a Tory with a grumble about the coalition’s polices. First of all, there’s massive irritation that the government has been forced into agreeing that prisoners should have the right to vote. It has revived Tory concerns about the ECHR and annoyance that the presence of the Lib Dems in the government means that nothing will be done about it. Then, there’s this Anglo-French defence agreement. Tories are, understandably, deeply suspicious of anything that smacks of giving the French a veto over the deployment of British forces. For many Tory MPs, the answer