The whole British army will be able to fit in the new Wembley stadium

Yesterday I wrote about Tony Blair's fine speech on the war on terror.  There are many reasons why Tony Blair has failed to turn fine words into credible actions.  But a leading reason is the way his government - and Chancellor Gordon Brown - have starved our armed forces of resources.  This point was well made by Liam Fox in a speech last night.  The Shadow Defence Secretary said:

"This year we will spend only 2.2% of our GDP on defence.  This is the smallest proportion of our national wealth that we have spent on defending our country since 1930.  By the time we finish the new Wembley Stadium, we will be able to seat the ranks of the whole of the British army inside it.  The Royal Navy will be smaller than the French navy. And the RAF Museum at Hendon will have more attack aircraft than the RAF does now...

The Army down 9,000.  The Royal Navy down 10,000.  The RAF down 16,000...

The lack of general debate about defence and security policy – rather than domestic affairs – is doubly strange given the varied locations in which British troops are currently serving.  Afghanistan and Iraq are the two most notable deployments, but British forces can still be found in the south Atlantic, the Balkans and West Africa.  Our global commitment amounts to some 15,000 troops – not including those permanently stationed in places like Cyprus and Germany.  Their task, wherever they serve, is not an easy one and as a nation, we are rightly proud of them.    Yet our armed forces have equally never been under such a strain.  They have never been asked to do so much with so little of the national wealth at their disposal.   Therefore there is an urgent debate for this country to have.  Do we reduce our commitments to match the size of our defence budget or do we increase our defence budget to match our commitments?"

Read a pdf of Liam Fox's speech here.

Comments

[malcolm]

Who could argue with this? Fox asks a lot of good questions in this speech particularly about the seemingly ill thought out mission given to UK troops in Afghanistan.No answers though.I would be interested to hear what the Conservative party proposes.

[mac]

Why is Cameron running to assist Blair to comply with the Maastricht Treaty by agreeing to fund political parties from state funds?

Why is he proposing to cut 10% of MP's? Which MP's? Which constituencies? What gives Cameron the right?

Why is Cameron instead of running to help BLair at every turn, not attacking Blair for overstretching and underfinancing our Armed Forces, for example leaving the Navy without plans for air cover?

What a shame Cameron won the leadership. Which he did by pretending to match Liam Fox's promise to exit the EPP. Fox would have been the better choice by far. It's never too late. But people must wake up to the fact that Cameron is not the solution to Blair. He's a continuation of the problem.

[Margaret]

mac wrote

"What a shame Cameron won the leadership. Which he did by pretending to match Liam Fox's promise to exit the EPP. Fox would have been the better choice by far. It's never too late. But people must wake up to the fact that Cameron is not the solution to Blair. He's a continuation of the problem."

You are right, and the EPP have said The centre-right European People's Party (EPP) will at its congress next week call for the "implementation" of the EU constitution,

What is Cameron waiting for???

[Margaret]

"The whole British army will be able to fit in the new Wembley stadium"

This is an absolute disgrace. If there were to be another war, we could not defend ourselves.

[Rob Largan]

Its good to see Fox keeping up a high profile, he has been quiet the last few months.

[johnC]

'The whole British army will be able to fit in the new Wembley stadium'

The way English football fans behave this is probably quite a useful statistic to bear in mind.

[True Blue]

Personally, I think deploying the entire army in Wembley stadium would be a strategic mistake.

Liam Fox is right, if we carry on this way, we might slip down the world military expenditure table from fifth place.

[PassingThru]

I wonder what Portillo 'scrap nuclear arms' because the Americans have them and can protect us would make of this.
I guess they have soldiers who would be willing to protect us too...?

While id like to think history has shown that to be the case, we need a strong AND independant military.

[John Reeks]

So where is everyone planning to deploy this massive standing army that they are convinced Britain needs? Nuclear weapons remove the chance of convention war with an equal or greater power, and at the same time push warfare itself into the asymetric/counterinsurgency arena. We need to be prepared to spend good money on our troops, and make sure theyre kitted out properly, but whether or not they all fit into Wembley is irrelevant.

[Greg Lance-Watkins]

Hi,

I appreciate Liam's concept of the whole British Army will be able to get in Wembley Stadium - this gives rise to two small points - there will be no British Army by the time the stadium is safe to sit in as it seems to be sinking in Labour slime or is it London Clay and like Labour's finances falling to bits as one watches with yet more cracks developing.

The other point is that if the army is only allowed British kit in the stadium they will have had to walk from barracks naked with no armament or ammunition due to the rate at which British defence manufacture has been cut and procurement transferred to our enemies and competitors in EUrope.

How will their tickets be paid for as Wembley won't take credit?

The defence R&D on the new Naval Radar has cost Britain over £300,000,000 which we paid to a French company rather than buy British! Having paid the full R&D cost now that it is in production we get no royalty and France owns ALL the patents and the intellectual property rights now selling each unit to us for £8,000,000.

Wasn't that good of Mr. Brown to transfer all that money and sell out the rights when we had perfectly capable British companies who are now collapsing!

I'm sure the scientists can retrain as time share salesmen for Spanish Villas and the rest can join Mr. Blair's new dole queue better known as local government under the common purpose controlled ODPM. No wonder we are all suffering from scheme fatigue - they have to be given something to do and the funding comes from OUR taxes double paying by sending it to the corrupt EU first!

It is no way to run a railroad - but look at the mess they are in too. OK so they couldn't run a sweetie shop but then again under EU direct rule who can - they are all closing down!

Best move to India and beg outside the gates of the flash new Call Centre set up by the British Companies driven out of the UK by EU Diktat and over bureaucratisation. I guess the Government makes such a fuss about chicken flue as they are cpraying for it to try to kill off their pension liabilities having stolen over £30,000,000,000 from the fund to paper over the cracks!

Such a pitty Vapid Cameroon is one of them dancing to the Common Purpose with his strings pulled by Clarke, Francis Fraud, hesseltine and their duplicitous ilk.

Regards,
Greg L-W.

[Brit Pat]

There's Something sinister about being unarmed as a populace under a Communist EU dictatorship then watching them demoralise and destroy our Armed Forces our only means of protection...My concern is the coming cultural revolution going to be as violent as most other Communist takeovers are because we Btits are clearly out of favour with out Govts...

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865