howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Weird Granny Slater wrote:Well, I guess it's now unlikely to be the kid Gavin. But I think Williamson's neither stupid enough nor intelligent enough to initiate a leak. He's an obvious patsy. Look to Sedwill (now both Cabinet Secretary and National Security Chair) for the why. The spooks have it.
Whether by accident or design it is probably the best thing he has done so far.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Penny Mordaunt has been named as our first female Defence Secretary, watch the Chinese and Russians panic when she says she is fine.
Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,877
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Neil Moors- Registered: 3 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,295
In a post Brexit world, there will be more of this. Far from being free, we will simply be beholden to non EU countries. China is the current example, then it'll be the US with the NHS, India with visas, we'll say yes to everything and everyone!
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ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
The Huawei issue is very interesting to someone from the tech sector. Most of my former colleagues and contacts who are specialists in this area agree with the GCHQ response which is essentially that, if Huawei kit is restricted to the "air interface", then the situation is manageable. OK, their kit has innate security weaknesses but it is cheap and reliable. That's an incredibly simplistic summary, of course.
That argument has clearly swayed Mrs May's judgment and did nothing to deter Cameron before her.
So how political an issue has this become? One of Wilkinson's cabinet colleagues is apparently on record as describing him as "a prat who has form". Government of all talents anyone?
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,877
At least this means Rory Stewart gets a Cabinet post in the reshuffle.
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,877
From the Speccie:-
The Tories are giving a masterclass in how to lose elections
The Spectator
When a political party is in trouble, we see infighting, leak inquiries, resignations, dismissals and botched attempts to depose the leader. When a party implodes, something different happens: it loses the ability to defend or explain itself. An imploding party can and will lose any argument, no matter how strong its track record. The Tories entered this terminal stage under John Major after the disastrous local elections of 1995, which were followed by their landslide defeat of 1997. It looks very much like they might be entering it again.
When John Major left, the economy was in such good shape that it took a typically overspending, over-regulating Labour government a whole decade to ruin it. Wages were at an all-time high, as was disposable income — and yet the Tories were still wiped out. Why? Because they came across as a feuding, disgraceful shambles; a sorry pantomime, which voters wished to bring to an end. Tories are yet again obsessed with their own party, more interested in settling scores than in governing or defeating Labour. They seem unable to work out what they got right, let alone where they are going wrong.
University reform, for example, has been a progressive success. It never made sense for the government to subsidise wealthy students — for as long as the huge subsidies existed, student numbers had to be capped. The fee was expanded to £9,000 and the cap removed. The result: vast expansion, more offers, and more students from poor backgrounds going to university than ever before. Graduates who don’t go on to earn much will never be asked to repay the whole fee. Yet all it took was an attack by Jeremy Corbyn for the Tories to put the entire policy under ‘review’.
On the environment, they also had success: coal-burning in power stations is at the point of being consigned to history. Britain has cut emissions faster than any G20 country since 1990 — carbon emissions have fallen to their lowest level since in Victorian times. The Tories had managed to strike a sensible balance between environmental protection and the need for affordable energy — and yet they end up repeating the soundbites of anti-capitalist protesters. The 16-year-old Greta Thunberg makes headlines because she has what ministers lack: self-confidence.
The Labour party this week produced a video suggesting that extra welfare makes the economy grow. It was well-produced but it made old and easily disproven arguments. Why can’t the Tories communicate the success of their own employment policies? Jobs have been created at a faster rate than at any time in our economic history, wages are growing at the fastest rate in ten years, and a labour shortage has taken power from employers and given it to workers. When Tony Blair came to power, 20 per cent of children were in jobless households. Labour left this at a still shocking 18 per cent. Tory reforms have further reduced this to 12 per cent. This is what progressive government looks like.
School reform has paid dividends, yet since Michael Gove left the education brief the Tories have been unable to recognise, let alone highlight, their success. Most secondary schools have successfully applied to become self-governing academies. Standards are soaring: since Labour left office, the proportion of children in schools rated ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ has risen from 66 per cent to 85 per cent. This is the surest way to promote opportunity and social mobility. Bad schools, which inflict damage on their communities, are rarer.
As for social justice, the best-paid 1 per cent are now paying a record 28 per cent of all income tax. That is an achievement which ought to warm the heart of any redistributionist — yet the Tories are silent. When Sir Roger Scruton was accused of thought crime, he was sacked within hours. The Tory assumption was that if it came to a fight, they should cave in as soon as possible. It’s not that government ministers are huddled in their bunker. It’s worse. Mentally they are already on trial, pleading leniency in the kangaroo court of their enemy.
Where is the fight? The party is supposed to have been fighting local elections this week, yet its senior figures can barely bring themselves to show their faces. There has been very little visible campaign. No wonder many of the party’s own councillors have all but given up and are threatening to vote for Nigel Farage’s Brexit party.
In 1997, John Major lost to a competent and moderate opposition at least. Theresa May is in danger of suffering an equally calamitous defeat to what would be the most left-wing government in British political history — led by a figure so shambolic that he makes Michael Foot look a statesman. There is still time to avoid that defeat, but it will require a total transformation in the Conservatives’ approach — and of leadership. With every day that Theresa May stays on, the Tories become more closely associated in voters’ minds with incompetence, chaos and defeat. As Sir John found out, such impressions, once formed, take a long time to reverse. It takes a truly incompetent party to create such a disaster from a backdrop of such success. If the Tories cannot replace Theresa May with a better leader, they will deserve what’s coming — even if the country does not.
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,788
I have no idea whether Williamson is guilty of the leak or not but this comes across as one of the usual unproven smear campaigns that the Conservatives seem to excel in under Mrs May.
Surely such an important breach of security should involve the police rather than this behind closed doors judgement.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Max Hastings writing in the Times.
Defence chiefs assemble tomorrow in Westminster Abbey, for what some people think a bizarre occasion. Clergy will confer a religious blessing upon 50 years of the Royal Navy’s submarine nuclear deterrence. Yet the brass now has a pleasing opportunity to rebrand the service: as a thanksgiving for delivery from Gavin Williamson. Nobody will mind getting down on their knees for that. The sacked defence secretary inspired heroic disdain among those obliged to work with him, ministers and public servants alike. He represented a mismatch between ambition and ability that seemed striking even by the standards of this government.
Williamson believed that he could use his office as a launchpad from which to propel himself to the premiership. He advanced personal initiatives - for instance, to restore Britain’s “out of area” capabilities, projecting power far afield - which exasperated both Downing Street and service chiefs. His personal behaviour was crass: he scrawled an obscenity about Mrs May on a written rebuke from her office, which shocked his own staff as much as it will startle historians, when eventually they get the chance to read it. I know no one in the defence and political loop who is not confident of Williamson’s culpability for the leak from the National Security Council which has now cost him his job. Indeed, their anger focuses upon the prime minister’s refusal to trigger a criminal investigation, for a breach of the Official Secrets Act for which he might well be convicted by a court.
But Williamson is now the past. What matters, or anyway should, to a government capable of thinking beyond Brexit, is the future. Although the British people wallow in sentimentality about their armed forces, they stand idly by while prime ministers delegate a procession of inadequates to serve as secretaries of state for defence. The last first-class incumbent left the MoD two decades ago - Labour’s George Robertson, who quit to become secretary-general of Nato. Thereafter, Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown appointed placemen, preoccupied with their own political survival from one Monday to the next. Ten years ago, when David Cameron was poised to form a government, I wrote him a private letter, beseeching him not to make Liam Fox defence secretary. Much more important people than me were convinced that Fox lacked both the intelligence and judgement to make a fist of it. He got the job anyway, because of his status as a shop steward for the Tory right, but remained the only person in the MoD who thought himself fit for it.
Following his enforced resignation, his successors Philip Hammond and Michael Fallon interpreted their responsibility as being to conceal from parliament and the British people the mismatch between defence commitments and funding. Both men worked harder at running a reign of terror against leakers of the truth, than at devising a credible national security policy. Hammond, ever the accountant, proved a whizz at massaging defence cash numbers for public consumption, while making no attempt to confront the ongoing spending crisis, which persists to this day. No defence secretary has admitted publicly (though most do so privately) that the Royal Navy’s giant aircraft-carriers, commissioned by Gordon Brown as a job-creation scheme for Scottish shipyards, represent a strategic nonsense.
For years, it has been assumed that the second behemoth would be mothballed or sold - most plausibly, to India - immediately on completion. Instead the ship is now approaching sea trials, because Gavin Williamson would not stop them. Many thoughtful people in the defence world, not all of them senior soldiers, believe that sustaining a deterrent on the scale of Trident represents a unaffordable big willy gesture for a nation of Britain’s 21st Century status. No defence think-tank can come up with a credible scenario for its use, or threat of use. But it will sail on, like the carriers, because nationalistic fantasies demand it.
The greatest blessing that the new defence secretary can confer on the armed forces will be to act as if she cares about doing the job for its own sake, rather than as a mere boring way-station until another government job comes her way. She can improve upon her predecessors’ record merely by telling the public some part of the truth about our defence predicament; and by seeking to judge issues on their merits, rather than by merely paddling in a sea of fudge. The army is chronically under-funded, and gets more so every year. The Navy needs a substantial number of cheap and cheerful warships, rather than giants that are mere yachts for admirals. The RAF should focus on a future that will be dominated by unmanned ground attack aircraft.
We are sorely in the need of allies. Paying lip service to the Nato and the Anglo-American relationship will not resolve the threat of post-Brexit isolation. The last US defense secretary told the British in a frank private exchange just before he left the Pentagon, that we should expect nothing from this US president, however many state visits we offer him. The choice facing those charged with our security is always the same. Is defence policy to continue to be founded upon gesture strategy - spending plans mostly designed to serve political purposes, to appease the Tory Right ? Or will it be determined by a realistic assessment of the threats facing us in the coming decades? Penny Mordaunt will deserve support and respect if she starts by admitting the problems, even if she cannot produce easy answers, because they do not exist.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Thanks, Howard. Very interesting and informative article. Wilkinson's departure seems to have provoked a similar reaction to the of BoJo whose staff in the foreign office described it as "liberation day" when he was sacked. Surely Grayling's time must be nigh. Getting shot of these incompetents is encouraging but one can only fear the inevitability of their return as wounded animals.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 7,877
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 2,986
Gavin the kid's ability with language is more stillborn lamb than dead sheep. Perhaps he has a speechwriter to do his savaging for him.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
I think the conservative associations will be after the guts of the 200 MPs that kept may in office
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
got off lightly, good for him.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,788
"However, the Met said on Saturday that the disclosure had not amounted to a criminal offence and did not contain information that would breach the Official Secrets Act."
In which case why was he sacked and with such a damning letter from the PM, maybe he upset someone who has significant influence with Mrs May.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Jan Higgins and Brian Dixon like this
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 2,986
Whoever it turns out to be, and my money's on this fellow,
there'll certainly be a riches of embarrassment for the rest of us to enjoy.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds"
Jan Higgins and Brian Dixon like this
