"War imposes moral obligations, especially upon those who send men into action. If they will the end, they must will the means. In Afghanistan, this would not necessitate vastly expensive space-age technology. It would merely require the basic tools of modern warfare, such as armoured vehicles whose armour is worth something, and helicopters. Without them, we are effectively reduced to Second World War methods....
Wherever there is out-dated equipment, whenever men's lives have been endangered by a failure to spend small sums, one man's fingerprints are always to be found: Gordon Brown's. After 1997, the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Charles Guthrie, offered every Cabinet minister a briefing on defence. All but one accepted. Gordon Brown could not be bothered. The only time he took a positive attitude to defence was when there was a prospect of some warship construction at the Rosyth shipyard, in his constituency. Otherwise, Mr Brown was uninterested, negative and surly....
Labour MPs often talk about corporate manslaughter and the need to prosecute company directors whose employees are killed in accidents because of low safety standards. So what about an outfit where safety was known to be deficient and which had received repeated warnings from many experts? Could it begin to mount a defence? Gordon Brown must be aware of the consequences, yet he chose to perpetuate a regime of neglect which was bound to lead to unnecessary deaths. He is morally guilty of corporate manslaughter."
