What is happening to the state of our Armed Forces? We had that tetchy exchange from the Prime Minister yesterday when, having promised to increase expenditure, He won’t say when. It’s always tomorrow. It’s always on the never, never. And yet there are real risks, risks that we are aware of. We now read in our newspapers that missiles from Iran could reach the United Kingdom, and we have no means of protecting ourselves from it. We might perhaps be able to scramble a Spitfire if there were a real emergency. No one in Government seems to be taking it seriously, and it’s all very well to blame the previous Government.
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And, as a former Conservative MP, I know we didn’t get everything right, but they’ve now been in office for nearly two years. That is a time in which you are in charge and you can make decisions, but they fail to do so. They fail to read the strategic runes. They failed to ensure that the Navy is in the right part of the world when trouble breaks out. In a war, in a conflict, that was perfectly obvious and from which and of which they ought to have had some warning if they had any diplomatic antennae at all.But finally, HMS Dragon limped along in the last couple of days, having been stuck in various other places en route. We simply don’t have the ships that we need.We don’t have the armaments that we need.We don’t have the protection that we need and we don’t seem to take it seriously.That was the point of Bernard Jenkin’s question yesterday, accusing the Prime Minister of being complacent.BRITAIN’S DEFENCE – READ THE LATEST:Britain could send civilian ships to Strait of Hormuz in bid to clear Iranian minesLabour minister claims Iran ‘has NO intention of striking UK’ just days after Tehran targeted ChagosKeir Starmer’s Iran strategy branded an ’embarrassment’ to the nation: ‘We’re not Great Britain!’There is a real problem and what is needed, it seems to me, is a strategic rethink of what we are trying to do.In the early 20th century, after the failures of the Boer War, we had the Esher Committee, which set out reforms to the way the Armed Forces worked together, then the Army and the Navy, to ensure that there was some way of bringing things together to make sure that there was an effective operation.It’s not all about money. We spend more money than the French and seem to get less for it.It’s about structures and making sure that money is well spent, and that you have what you need in a world that has become increasingly dangerous.It’s about an understanding of realpolitik as to what the risks are and who your friends are and who your enemies are.But we have just allowed ourselves to grow fat and flabby. We are like the Angles paying the Dane geld to the Danes – that we were comfortable.We were rich and it was easier to pay people to go away.And in the end, the Danes won’t go away unless we are safe and secure and have a proper defence policy Our Standards:
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