Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

The Ulster Unionists

I see these annoying people are trying to hold up the transfer of policing powers to Northern Ireland and Martin McGuinness has expressed irritation. No small wonder. Even the DUP  is signed up to it. Apparently Sir Reg Empey is trying to use the issue as a bargaining chip to get the eleven plus restored. What nonsense.

Nothing shows Cameron’s inexperience and PR approach to politics more than his idiotic decision to enter into an electoral pact with these obstructionist bigots. The UUP is in the political stone age. They have lost the argument and time has moved on. Fortunately nobody cares about them any more so the Tories are unlikely to lose mainland votes over it. Nevertheless with the UUP and Lord Ashcroft there are shadows in the Tory wings which many people do not like. The majority of down to earth, compassionate, one nation Tories need to let in some light.

Military Equipment.

This issue has gained traction because of the allegation that parsimony at the Treasury under Gordon Brown meant there was not enough cash to buy boots, bullets, body armour, helicopters and proper armoured vehicles. Troops lives were lost as a consequence. This last doleful truth is the only unchallenged fact of this very sorry matter.

We need to get some things straight. There are not many really good Generals in history. Some are competent but most arrive as a career progression and make a variable contribution. Chancellors of the Exchequer are not responsible for ordering military equipment. The Ministry of Defence is financially out of control and wastes more money on cancelled and delayed projects than anybody dare total up. The two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan have so far cost the country £18 billion.

The scale of blundering ineptitude at the Ministry of Defence is without parallel in our history since the Crimea. The officials, severely criticised in the latest Report of the Defence Select Committee, simply do not know what they are doing. The senior Military Officers, especially the army generals, are falling a good deal short of average. Sometimes they talk utter rubbish. An incoming Government of whatever persuasion has to get a grip of this. I preferred the old system of the War Office, the Admiralty and later the Air ministry. The system saw off Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler. It is too late to go back to that but I would remove from the MOD all responsibility for procurement. We would be better off with Tesco doing it.

The problem is not just money. We do not have a foreign policy of our own, we tag along with the U.S model, which is designed for its  superpower posture. We conduct ourselves according to their beat as if we too were a superpower; indeed we seem to see ourselves as a mini-superpower. The result is we fight wars that cannot be won with substandard equipment on borrowed money. We can blame the politicians but it is not all their fault.

Many, though not all, have a scant grasp of history and little military experience. They rely for defence advice on the military officers, as in the health service they rely on the doctors. These officers did not realise that a converted agricultural farmer’s car, while useful in beefed up form in Northern Ireland is ridiculous as a modern troop carrying weapons platform to fight a real war. They tell us they did but the Chancellor of the Exchequer (who?) did not listen. What rubbish. The military are responsible for indicating the type of weapons needed and for making sure that the Minister of Defence of the day sees to it that either they get them or foreign policy is constrained because they can’t have them.

Such is the scale of the muddle it is beyond the scope of this blog to fully explore. There has been much made of helicopters. Lack of money is blamed. But we had the helicopters. All we needed. A whole fleet of Chinooks in a vast climate controlled hanger where they had sat for years because they could not fly. This was because the imbecile Ministry of Defence had decided not to have the software from Boeing which was the standard equipment but to make up software of its own. This did not work of course and after years and many tens more millions these machines are being converted back to what they were in the beginning. I am not surprised if the Treasury locked up its cheque book. 

In my view one of the areas where Labour is vulnerable is the whole business of using military action as an instrument of foreign policy and then failing to identify the yawning chasm between foreign policy objective and military capability. I criticise also the top brass who really have not done enough to sort out what they need, why, what for and when.  As for the procurers of whatever they are called, they are utterly off the page.

In the end it matters at many levels, but one above the others. To send troops into battle in a fight that does not have to be fought to achieve a political objective however worthy, with inadequate equipment, knowing their lives and limbs are at extra risk, is not war. It is murder.

The Tory high command has an opportunity here. It has made the mistake of focusing on Gordon Brown. The issue is much bigger than our Gordon (who is in any event no longer such an asset to the Tory campaign) requiring very dynamic thinking with a tough follow through. I see nothing happening.

Gordon Brown

It is difficult to judge the effect, if any, on voters’ psyche of Brown’s appearance before Chilcot yesterday. The papers are full of arguments about whether he did, or did not give the Generals what they wanted when it came to money and he was Chancellor. This is a big subject, not at all as played in the media, which is the subject of the next blog.

In the wider sense of a public performance Gordon did a lot better than Tony. Respectful of losses, weighed by enormity of war, fresh with a more convincing rationale for doing it, distant from some of the detail, loyal in support of his chief. There was nothing there to give the Tories an easy goal, nor indeed anything to up Labour’s score.

There was one thing though. Gordon was sober, reflective and sensible. This was in sharp contrast to Tony, who came across as manic, deluded and unhinged. That may prove significant. One more step in the gradual rise from the ashes of Gordon Brown, because his frantic efforts to get rid of Tony look more and more like a campaign of national deliverance.