Bernard Jenkin MP: Can the UK afford to play a global defence role?

Bernard Jenkin is Conservative MP for North Essex and a member of the Defence Select Committee.

David Cameron’s decision to protect the defence budget for the first year of a Conservative government will not dominate the election, but it indicates that he does not seek to become prime minister of a declining world power.  The ugly choices he will face in defence over the next twelve months will define what sort of country we are for decades to come.  Public spending choices in the next Parliament will be the toughest since the 1930s. We must not repeat the mistakes with defence that our grandfathers made then. Can we afford our global role? The question we should be asking is: can we afford to lose it?

Protecting the budget for the first year will not even provide temporary respite.  As Ronald Reagan quipped, "status quo is Latin for the mess we are in".  An attempt merely to stand still financially beyond year one will have dramatic consequences for the forthcoming review.  If defence spending were to flatline for the next decade, the informed view is that the MOD would be unable to afford any new equipment orders for 10 years.

So why not just write off the whole mess, junk the expense of our global role, and accept that the UK is now just another European country?  Because for British prosperity and security, the UK's global role is not a lifestyle choice.  It is an imperative.

In today's world, overpopulation, shortage of food, competition for resources, the risk of environmental catastrophe, mass migration, accelerating technological change, nationalism and extremism are all on the rise.  These are factors now aggravated by global recession. Is this the moment to substitute effective hard power for the myth of soft power?  Advocates of soft power are those who have decided to rely on a free ride on the hard power of others, including our own. 

Can we, too, risk opting out of a global role?  Which nation would fill the space as America's most influential and enduring ally?  Are we actually to encourage the US to become unilateralist?  Who would protect our shipping from the Somalian pirates?  Who would win the friendship of the oil-rich Gulf States if we abandon them – and get their defence equipment orders?  Who would invest in NATO if we disinvest? Which other nation or nations would gain from our retreat? 

We cannot afford to fight so many wars as we have in recent years, but we must always remain able to deter them (cheaper than fighting them) and to be prepared for the unexpected.  We need the new smaller surface warships to patrol the many parts of the world where we need to deter aggression or give humanitarian aid.  The great strength of the Royal Navy is its ability to loiter, perhaps unseen over the horizon, but still exerting a UK presence nevertheless. 

We need more drones to track terrorists, to support ground troops and to provide intelligence.  (The idea that a low-tech insurgency can be met by low-tech armed forces in response is simply rubbish.)  Fast jets do not just protect our own airspace, but also ground forces.  Flexible, deployable capability gives us that indefinable and indispensable quality that a powerful nation needs – it is called "influence" and it takes decades, not years, to create such capabilities, and it would take decades to recreate them if we gave them up just because of a short-term fiscal crisis.

Defence spending in 2008-09 was 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product, including the costs of operations. With a small increase in that percentage, we could maintain a broad spectrum of capabilities and retain the UK's global role. That would be outstanding value for money for the UK.  That is the choice.

Bernard Jenkin MP: The bomb that was meant to kill Margaret Thatcher

Bernard Jenkin MP reflects on his very personal experience of the Brighton Bomb, 25 years ago.

I drove the Environment Secretary (my father) down to the 1984 conference, where I would meet my wife-to-be for the first time.  Apparently, I caught Anne's eye as we entered the Grand Hotel that evening.  I was meeting another girl for a drink, who subsequently introduced me to Anne, along with a whole gang of people, including John Whittingdale, Michael Dobbs, Nick True, Richard Ehrman and Michael Portillo.  We all went out to dinner.  Anne and I got on wonderfully from the start.

For us it seemed to be a heady week, of politics, parties and a growing passion. We could so easily have been in the Grand, but we heard the blast from some way off. We only began to suspect it was a bomb as emergency vehicles sped past. This was before the days of mobile phones, but I called the police on a landline, knowing that my father was staying at the Grand. I was kept hanging on for ages. Finally, "There has been a blast at the Grand. So far we only have reports of cuts and scratches from flying glass."  I was told to stay put and wait till they called back with more news.

We waited two very long, very tense hours. When the phone rang, I leapt for it.  "All members of the government are accounted for," was the cryptic comment. The poor girl on the end of the phone had no idea where my Dad was.

In the cold grey light of early dawn, Anne and I set off to look for him, passing from hotel to hotel to asking if anyone had seen him. When we saw the front of the Grand itself, we were astonished by the damage. Clearly there would be worse than cuts and scratches.

Lots of people were standing around in pyjamas, or dressing gowns.  Michael Spicer was wearing nothing but a towel.  Keith Joseph was sitting on his red box on the pavement outside - yes he had seen him. So had Norman Fowler. Rumour was that the Tebbits and the Wakehams were missing, but until I set eyes on my Dad, I did not care about much else.

Bernard Jenkin MP: It was an election night of mixed emotions in the Jenkin household in 1979

Bernard Jenkin has been a Conservative MP since 1992, but at the 1979 general election, he was a 20-year-old on his gap year working as an aide to a Tory MP, whilst his father, Patrick Jenkin, was re-elected for Wanstead and Woodford that night and appointed to Margaret Thatcher's first Cabinet.

I was Hugh Rossi's election aide in 1979, during my gap year, and first met Mrs T when she called in to address the party workers at the Hornsey Conservatives, just a few days before polling day.

At the Hornsey count, when Hugh got his biggest ever majority, over Red Ted Knight (election agent, one Jeremy Corbyn, now MP) we knew we were winning. I got home (near Highgate) around 3am to find my mother back from the Wanstead and Woodford count and watching the results on TV (MP father gone broadcasting).

We went to let the dog out, and found that that burglars had taken advantage of election night. In fact, Mother must have disturbed them when she had got back. They must have escaped with her jewellery and a silver mantle clock through the garden as she unwittingly surprised them. "Not a night of unalloyed joy for you", Robin Day commented as he introduced Father on the BBC.

Nevertheless, the first time Mrs T was pictured with Giscard, Carter et al for some forthcoming summit, we all knew the world had changed. Father disappeared into the world of red boxes as Secretary of State for Health and Social Security. I left for a job on race horse stables in the South West of France.

Lord Hurd, Eric Pickles and John Bercow have already provided their recollections of the 1979 election, and several others will follow during the course of the day.

Bernard Jenkin MP: The issue at the heart of the Damian Green affair is privilege

Bernard Jenkin is MP for North Essex and a member of the Defence Select Committee.

The end of the Parliamentary term left the Damian Green affair hastily and shoddily shoved aside, but the important issue at stake remains, not the future of the Speaker, nor what the Home Secretary knew, nor even whether Damian Green is innocent or guilty.  The most important issue may seem arcane; it is parliamentary privilege. 

MPs hold privilege in trust for the people, so at all times, Parliament can protect them from an over zealous state.  It is not about protecting MPs for themselves.  It is vital protection for any democracy.  Every other constitution, whether modelled on ours or not, provides its legislators with a degree of immunity in some form.  But so far, Parliament has failed to act to protect its independence. 

This issue scares ‘modern’ politicians.  “People don’t understand what you mean,” they say, and in any case, “Do people care?” they ask.  “There are no votes in privilege,” some say; “The next election is about the economy.”  That may be so, but Parliamentary privilege breached without complaint sets a dangerous precedent – yet that is exactly what has happened.  It is clear that Damian’s arrest was used as the pretext for the search of his office without a warrant, probably more in pursuit of the whistleblower rather than Damian.  The real issue is whether Parliament should be asserting privilege in order to protect its ability to carry out its constitutional duty, rather than behaving as merely the elected branch of the executive. 

Breach of privilege may create only a minor political storm, but it is a major breach of the law.  In our uncodified constitution, privilege relies on the 1689 Bill of Rights, which is deemed to have special status, thereby remaining superior to other legislation.  However, Parliament’s failure to seek to have the law applied leaves it weakened.  As MPs left for the Christmas recess, Parliament appeared to be relegating itself to a subsidiary tier in the UK constitution.  It is bizarre that the Police have been holding their own inquiry, but Parliament has not.

Bernard Jenkin MP: The total lack of scrutiny of the Lisbon Treaty shows British democracy is becoming an elective dictatorship

Bernard Jenkin, MP for North Essex and a member of the Defence Select Committee, explains how Commons scrutiny of the Lisbon Treaty is virtually non-existent.

Last week’s proceedings on the European Union (Amendment) Bill, better known as the Lisbon Treaty, underline the farce that the House of Commons has become.  No wonder so few MPs are bothering to turn up, when the chances of being called to speak are so small.  No wonder fewer and fewer people bother to vote at General Elections when there is so little constructive debate and so much about politicians feathering their own nests.  The Government’s manipulation of the Commons timetable has deliberately stifled debate on the Lisbon Treaty and means that voters are getting a very raw deal from their elected representatives.  Few of the younger Labour colleagues seem to grasp what powers have been progressively stolen from MPs over the past decade.

Despite the manifest importance of the Lisbon Treaty, its second reading (where the general principle of a bill is discussed) had a mere six hours of debate – the same as any ordinary bill these days.  The Maastricht Treaty had two days for its second reading, with the first day allowed to continue through the night, so that anyone who wanted to speak could do so.  Speakers had no limits on the length of their speeches, but for Lisbon, backbenchers were limited to just eight minutes, no time at all to develop an argument on a bill  implementing a treaty which runs to 294 pages!

Bernard Jenkin MP: A defence policy for the UK that matches commitments and resources

Bernard Jenkin has just authored 'A Defence Policy for the UK: Matching Commitments and Resources', published by Conservative Way Forward.

The MoD Performance Report’s “overall assessment” of its ability to “Generate forces, which can be deployed, sustained and recovered at the scales of effort required” is “unlikely to be met.”  We not only need about £15 billion extra in the defence budget (about 50 per cent more), just to maintain present capabilities and equipment programmes, but the government – any government – needs to understand the nature of real nature of the choice.  Defence policy has become divorced from the demands placed upon the Armed Forces by foreign policy.  Either we bulk up our defence or opt out of a global role.  If foreign policy demands intervention, the Armed Forces must be funded accordingly.  Labour’s attempts to subcontract UK foreign and defence policy to international institutions have manifestly failed.

When, in his Guildhall speech, the prime minister advocated the UK’s role as “hard-headed internationalism”, the BBC not unfairly asked what “soft-headed internationalism” might look like.  Though Mr Brown is anxious to distance himself from his predecessor, this is the same muddle which afflicted Mr Blair.  His foreign policy was characterised by the infamous ‘open mike’ incident, “Yo Blair!”  The embarrassment was not that President Bush appeared to forget the prime minister’s first name.  Rather it was that Mr Blair’s suggestions about the Middle East were just dismissed.  As he found over Iraq, in the end “internationalism” lacks leverage.

Labour’s so-called ‘ethical’ foreign policy failed to define the UK’s global role.  The 1999 Kosovo campaign was a one-off, but Mr Blair seized on it as a new basis for military intervention, in one of the non-sentences that became his rhetorical signature, “A just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values.”   Globalisation required “a new doctrine of international community” under which, “In the end, values and interests merge” – not a comment that would impress even a lower-sixth student of philosophy.  In the US, there is today a new realism about foreign policy, with some now advocating an “ethical realism” to be based upon old-fashioned enlightened self-interest, in tradition of Edmund Burke.  British foreign policy should comprise less messianic preaching of values: more listening and accommodating of others’ legitimate interests alongside our own.  Good results matter more than good intentions.  It is more intellectually honest to admit that the British national interest, above all, is what should underpin UK foreign policy, rather than some spurious doctrine of international community.  This is actually rather obvious.  British governments are elected by the British people to serve the British people.  Policy may well be designed to serve wider international interests, but it is pretence to suggest that we do not put our own interests first.

British foreign policy must protect our interests as the pre-eminent European global trading nation.  We have strong historic connections with both today’s greatest power (the US) and with new great powers emerging (China and India) and the old Commonwealth. Our language, soaked in British values of freedom and free enterprise, has become the global vernacular of trade and diplomacy.  In defining our global role, it would be rash to rely on others to maintain the international peace and security on which the global system depends.  Who would step into the breach?