Action Man risks being yesterday’s man

DEFENCE Secretary Gavin Williamson has been in his job for less than three months, but a day doesn’t seem to pass without him grabbing the headlines.

Posing for photos with military personnel, making threatening noises to the Chancellor about cuts, revealing that an office romance once almost destroyed his marriage and warning, yesterday, that Moscow could cause ‘thousands and thousands and thousands of deaths’ in Britain with an attack that would cripple our energy supply.

For all this Action Man activity, I worry that Mr Williamson, 41, is the latest in a long line of politicians whose heads have been turned after being talked up as a future prime minister — but then, just as swiftly, see their careers crash and burn.

The list is endless: David Owen in the late Seventies, Thatcherite ‘golden boy’ John Moore in the Eighties, Alan Milburn in the New Labour years . . .

I fear Mr Williamson’s career will nosedive unless he conceals his rampant ambition and behaves with more gravitas.

Yes, Russia could destroy Britain with a nuclear attack tomorrow. But we deserve a defence secretary who has a measured response to threats, not one who insults our intelligence with inflammatory, apocalyptic talk.