Unilateral disarmament
Andrew Gilligan says that the new defence cuts will unman the British armed forces, and put soldiers' lives at risk Tony Blair's relationship with the Labour Left has always been sadly troubled. But now, finally, after Iraq, privatisation, the continued existence of foxhunting and the remaining litany of disappointments, comes something to bring a song to Jeremy Corbyn's heart. If the press predictions of defence cuts are even half-right, New Labour is about to carry out a major act of unilateral disarmament.
Candidates for the graveyard include four infantry battalions (10 per cent of the total); six Royal Navy ships (15 per cent of the active surface fleet); up to a fifth of the RAF; an entire fast jet type, and probably a helicopter type too; RAF bases; dozens of tanks and armoured vehicles; even some of Geoff Hoon's 150 public relations advisers (actually, I made that last one up — the most vital capabilities must be preserved at all costs).
Some of the leaking may be a form of expectation management, which the MoD is good at. Perhaps the actual cuts, which may come in stages, will look slightly better by comparison with the most dire forecasts. But there is no doubt that the RAF, at least, is in for a drubbing. By the service's own admission, the number of places on its basic flying training courses has already been reduced by 50 per cent 'to ensure that the RAF has the right number of pilots for its future needs'.
With the combined trained strength of the armed forces reduced after the cuts to perhaps as little as 175,000, the day is nearly upon us when, for the first time in history, the vast, sprawling conurbation of the MoD's civilian bureaucracy actually outnumbers all three armed services put together. Including staff working overseas, the number of directly employed civil servants in the MoD and its executive agencies is 104,000, already greater than the army: and to this must be added the further 55,000 civilian contractors who provide training, IT, security, catering, base support, record-keeping and a galaxy of other services on MoD sites, More NHS administrators than beds, anyone?
What have the armed forces done to deserve this? It might be argued that their major error was to win a war. Each time Our Boys have made the elementary mistake of doing well in a military operation, from Gulf War I to Bosnia, a significant proportion have returned to redundancy notices. This is not as frivolous a point as it may seem.
'In some ways, we are our own worst enemy,' admits a senior army officer. 'We constantly and rightly complain of rotten equipment, overstretched personnel and inadequate budgets — all problems which are getting worse — and then when the politicians ask us to do it anyway, we turn round and say "No problem". And then we do do it.'
After years of operating on a relative shoestring, Britain's forces are masters of improvisation, of making do, of pulling it off in the face of the odds. The MoD may not give them proper kit, but they buy it themselves instead. British soldiers cope with inadequate boots, or unsuitable clothing, because many really are fitter and tougher than other troops. They adapt more easily when something breaks down. To a certain extent, the forces' surfeit of quality makes up for their deficit of quantity.
But only to a certain extent: and all intelligent soldiers know that this is a deficit which can be stretched only so far. Even during last year's relative walkover, pennypinching cost British lives; and sooner or later the British army may meet an enemy who does not run away. Sooner or later, the demands being made on the army's backbone, its non-commissioned officers, may cause them to leave in numbers at which effective fighting units cannot be sustained. Sooner or later there is a very real risk of British soldiers dying unnecessarily in relatively large numbers.
The forces will probably continue to look good from the outside, whatever happens next month. They will still try to do what they're asked, and even if they're no longer quite able to, only a few people will know. But maybe a better strategy would be what we might call the Bob Crow approach. 'What would have happened if we had told the MoD, in good time before Iraq, that we would refuse to deploy unless there were proper chemical filters in our armoured vehicles?' says the senior officer. 'Maybe they'd have worked a little harder to give us chemical filters.'
The other thing the services might consider is becoming slightly higher-profile lobbyists. Next month's cuts are not principally the result of an actual reduction in expenditure. Defence spending has increased in real terms under Labour and the signs are that it will, however modestly, continue to do so. The cuts are caused by the MoD's gross inability to control the costs on its biggest-ticket projects, and by the government's gross inability to say no to any juicy world-reshaping projects that scroll across the CNN newsbar, America's military leaders have independent access to Congress and the media to plead their case for matching resources to commitments. British chiefs have allowed themselves to be silenced by the PRs. 'But we do work for the government', the former chief of defence staff, Lord Guthrie, used to protest when accused of acquiescence. Certainly the interests of the military and ministers are similar. But they are not the same.
One thing, alas, which the armed forces can no longer rely on is Her Majesty's Official Opposition. The Tories have promised to freeze defence-spending for the first two years of a Howard government, something which has reportedly infuriated the shadow defence secretary, Nicholas Soames. The moment that this was announced, back in February, was the moment I knew for certain that the services were going to suffer badly this year. Labour can do more or less what it wants, safe in the knowledge that the Tories can legitimately be accused of even less generous intentions.
As the cuts stories have rolled off the presses in the last few weeks. Mr Soames has produced all the appropriate huffing and puffing. He has the right physique for it. But he must know that if his spending policy does not change, his own colleagues have cut the ground from under his feet, Andrew Gilligan is defence and diplomatic editor of The Spectator.
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