Defence Secretary who is simply a tinpot opportunist
MANY distinguished politicians have occupied the position of senior defence secretary, including Denis Healey, Michael Heseltine and above all Winston Churchill. But never has there been such a dismal incumbent than the current post-holder Gavin Williamson, whose ferocious personal ambition is wholly unmatched by his judgment or authority.
A statesman only in his imagination he manages to combine the bombastic shallowness of Alan Partridge with the frivolous immaturity of Private Pike from Dad’s Army.
It is disturbing to think that the nation’s security is partly in the hands of this tinpot opportunist. In recent days he has yet again shown his unfitness for his office with an extraordinary attempt at political blackmail against the Prime Minister to secure a massive increase in defence expenditure. As part of this campaign for an extra £4billion a year he openly told a meeting of defence chiefs: “I made her and I can break her.”
His arrogant claim was not only disloyal but also absurd. His rise owes everything to Theresa May, who was the chairman of the Conservative Party almost a decade before Williamson was even elected as MP. As Prime Minister she is the one who can break him.
WILLIAMSON’S outburst was typical of the blustering style that has shattered his credibility. Empty rhetoric has become the hallmark of the gauche Defence Secretary, epitomised by his childish statement after the Salisbury nerve agent attack that Russia should just “go away and shut up”. His pathetic refusal to explain this juvenile remark led the Daily Express’s own Richard Madeley to terminate a live TV interview with him.
Williamson has been in his job since last November but has already proved himself hopelessly maladroit. Yet perhaps his most serious flaw is one of policy more than personality. In his agitation for more taxpayers’ cash he has failed to explain why a lavish new increase in defence spending is necessary.
All he does is parrot the unconvincing rhetoric of the defence establishment and the retired generals’ union, full of vagueness about foreign threats and vanity about Britain’s global role.
Headed by Williamson, the champions of defence-related prodigality like to argue that “the first duty of the Government is to protect the public”. But that does not mean we have to indulge the expensive ambitions of the top brass.
For the British public’s protection, money would be far better spent on police, counterintelligence, prisons and border controls rather than on frigates and fighters. The real, immediate danger to our society comes from criminality and domestic terrorism, not from some theoretical menace overseas.
The shrill demands of Williamson might carry more weight if the Ministry of Defence was not so disgracefully spendthrift, bureaucratic and mismanaged. Defence procurement is rightly a byword for extravagant waste, while the hierarchies of the Armed Forces are excessively top-heavy.
Earlier this year the National Audit Office issued a scathing report about the ministry’s budget, highlighting huge cost overruns and failures to achieve promised savings. Francis Tusa, the editor of Defence Analysis, said: “For those who think that the solution to the ‘budget black hole’ is simply more money then the NAO’s report shows that behaviours are so bad that extra money
THE same lack of realism led the MoD to order two aircraft carriers, each of them costing more than £3 billion, without any clear idea of the use to which these lumbering leviathans will be put. One former defence chief admitted that new missile technology means that the carriers are “vulnerable tin cans”, requiring the deployment of huge resources for their own protection. This outdated approach is the opposite of the “agile capability” which the ministry likes to pretend it has embraced.
At the heart of the calls for a bigger defence budget lies a quasi-imperialist yearning for British power to be projected across the world. The former defence chief Lord Houghton said this week that Britain should be a country “that will help to secure the stability of the world”. But why should such a duty be imposed? The days of empire are long gone. We no longer have to act as a global policeman.
More importantly the impulse to intervene militarily overseas, whether in Iraq, Syria, Libya or Afghanistan, has – since 2000 – resulted in more chaos and turmoil, despite the heroism of our fighting personnel on the front line.
Caving into Williamson’s hysterical financial threats will just enable the Ministry of Defence to embark on further reckless adventurism, which will foment extremism abroad and undermine security at home.
Instead of indulging in posturing on the international stage the Government should focus on the needs of the British people here.
‘Why is new lavish spending necessary?’