On Monday I spoke at the IPPR’s conference on The National Security Strategy: One Year On. The organisers and the Cabinet Office team would, I hope, have been pleased with the meat of the conference – the three panel sessions on domestic/ international security and a separate session on the key drivers of the global insecurity went pretty well.
But sandwiching the panel sessions were two Ministerial speeches and based on what was said and people’s reactions to the speeches it seems as though we are in middle of a crisis of leadership and strategy in UK defence. This isn’t solely an issue for the Government it is an important issue for the Conservative Party and for the Liberal Democrats too.
To be fair to the Defence Secretary John Hutton he had a more difficult challenge than Lord West who opened proceedings. For Mr Hutton the challenge was to tap into the mood of the conference – a hundred or so participants who had spent the day analysing the global security challenges, identifying key concerns, and raising important issues.
The trick with Mr Hutton’s speech was in some way to reflect this mood, embrace some of the more difficult issues but above all listen (after all Mike Clarke had just gone through all the problems of British defence policy). Lastly the crowd was predominantly white, Anglo-saxon, males – average age 40. In short it was a crowd who know all the problems (some are up to the necks in it) but need leadership and a sense of direction.This was not to be. The speech was littered with utterly pointless and disingenuous phrases like:
‘As a Defence Minister, you would rightly expect me to talk about the role of defence in national security and it is here that I want to confine my remarks today.’
‘And I am not prepared to be reckless with our nation’s security.’
‘Our defence policies have adapted comprehensively in recent years from the 1998 Strategic Defence Review, through the New Chapter of that Review four years later, the Defence White Paper of 2003 and its 2004 companion, leading to the NSS itself.’
‘The world remains a dangerous place after all.’
I could go on. The general feeling from the group I was sitting with was that really difficult decisions are about to made and this speech was meant to be a primer – thing is it didn’t work – finally his officials should have done a better job at briefing him before he made his remarks…
Elsewhere the Conservative Party are fighting over defence spending. George Osborne should have been more aggressive – particularly on wastefulness – rather than focusing on the A400M – which was odd. The big question though for the Tories is who will be Defence Secretary in a Conservative Government – it won’t be Liam Fox so who will it be – there isn’t much strength in depth – and that should worry Cameron and his team.
