Williamson went the full Frank Spencer . . .
WE should spend a great deal more on the Forces and David Cameron’s Coalition was ‘at best naive’ in its defence strategy: there was solid policy and an overdue admission of recent failings in Gavin Williamson’s speech yesterday.
But you do slightly wonder what our youthful Defence Secretary would be like at bayonet practice.
The fighting man, when about to stab straw-stuffed exercise dummies, is encouraged by non- commissioned officers to growl and shout and show aggression. Yesterday Mr Williamson, asked what should be done about the Putin threat, went the full Frank Spencer. Russia, he said darkly, ‘should go away and shut up’. You tell ’em, Pike. Mr Williamson was speaking in Bristol at the Rolls-Royce plant where they make warplane engines and maybe some other military bits and pieces.
Given the warlike uses of RollsRoyce products, it felt paradoxical to start the mid-morning event with a health and safety announcement from a site foreman but such are the ways of the modern world. Shades of Dr Strangelove’s ‘gentlemen, you can’t fight in here, this is the War Room’.
Mr Williamson, 41, had two aims: to prepare the political ground for greater defence spending and to promote himself as a presence in the Cabinet. His fast rise in politics makes him a new figure for most voters. They may be ready for some freshness – a change from Parliament’s staler voices – but that does mean he has territory to make up when it comes to earning the country’s trust.
Uniformed soldiers, sailors and RAF bods were in attendance. That is the great thing about being Defence Secretary. Your ‘stakeholders’ are so much more glamorous than those attached to other Whitehall departments.
Among them was Royal Marine General Sir Gordon Messenger, DSO & Bar, who led 40 Commando in the Iraq War, ran our ops in Helmand and is now vice Chief of the Defence Staff.
The general was yesterday in camouflage gear and desert boots (quite possibly the same ones he wore when leading the assault of the Al-Faw peninsula). He is one of those fit, suntanned soldiers who looks as though he could easily snap an enemy sentry’s neck in the crook of his left elbow.
Slender, loping-legged Mr Williamson, for his part, looks as though he might struggle to decapitate a six-minute boiled egg.
no matter. Mr Williamson is a politician, not a warrior. In this era of cyber attacks and Russian chemical weapons, maybe it does not matter if Defence Secretaries look nerdy and sound a touch Alan Bennett. Mr Williamson is not a natural orator but he is slowly improving.
HAvInG spoken of the ‘generational shift’ in defence (ie ‘I’m the new generation’?), Mr Williamson spoke of types of hardware that are ‘ hallmarks of a serious military nation’ and argued that ‘soft power only works because hard power stands behind it’.
He described his ‘vision’ of future defence arrangements saying ‘let’s not give in to the demons of doubt – instead let us be confident’. When Cabinet ministers talk of their ‘vision’ they may mean ‘ambition’. Did he itch to get his hands on some of the International Aid budget? A vulpine smile. ‘I do have great ideas of how to spend an extra £14 billion,’ he said, but such things were for the Chancellor.
Actually, that is not so. The current spending on foreign aid was set by a parliamentary Act demanded by nick Clegg. Would it win a Commons majority today? With Labour backbenchers keen to prove their defence beliefs, maybe not.
As for Mr Williamson’s ‘go away and shut up’ remark, this will enter the annals of British arms, a rallying cry to rival Henry v at the gates of Harfleur, Churchill in 1940 and Colonel Tim Collins on the eve of battle in Iraq. Putin, you Siberian boor, you casually murderous Muscovite, you Steppegooser, you goral-botherer, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Defence has had enough. Shut up and go and sit in the corner.